MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 


Ctfccr 
Sjenrp  JDemarest 


WEALTH  AGAINST  COMMONWEALTH 
A  STRIKE  OF  MILLIONAIRES  AGAINST  MINERS 

LABOUR  COPARTNERSHIP 

A  COUNTRY  WITHOUT  STRIKES 

NEWEST  ENGLAND 


Copyright,  1903,  by  J.  E.  Purdy,  Boston. 


Man,  the  Social  Creator 

BY 
HENRY  DEMAREST  LLOYD 


"  It  is  pleasant  to  see  before  otheri  what  is  coming, 
but  it  is  hard  to  wait  until  enough  of  the  others 
tee  it  to  make  the  coming  possible."— H.  D.  LLOYD. 


NEW  YORK 

Doubleday,  Page  &  Company 
1906 


Copyright,  1906,  by 

William    Bross    Lloyd 

Published  March,  1906 


AU  rights  reserved1, 

including  that  of  traniiaiiau  into  foreign  languaftt, 
including  the  Scandinavian. 


HM 


TUB  WORLD'S  WORK  PRESS,  NBW  YORK 


EDITORS'  NOTE 

FOR  ten  years  before  his  death,  in  1903,  Mr.  Lloyd  had  contem' 
plated  a  book  upon  religion,  and  had  gradually  prepared  a  large 
amount  of  material  toward  its  publication.  During  this  same 
period  he  investigated  various  governmental  and  co-operative 
experiments,  largely  because  he  regarded  them  as  the  most  significant 
and  tangible  evidence  of  a  coming  religion.  He  made  a  careful 
examination  of  the  co-operative  movement  in  England,  which  he 
embodied  in  his  "Labour  Copartnership";  also  a  detailed  study 
of  the  advanced  legislation  of  New  Zealand  and  Australia,  which 
he  described  in  "A  Country  Without  Strikes"  and  "Newest  Eng- 
and";  and  yet  again  he  went  to  Switzerland  for  the  material  of  his 
'Swiss  Sovereign,"  upon  which  he  was  working  at  the  time  of  his 
death.  These  newer  phases  of  the  democratic  spirit  which  he 
discovered  in  various  quarters  of  the  globe,  whither  he  journeyed 
with  unabated  enthusiasm,  he  held  precious  chiefly  because  they 
confirmed  and  illustrated  his  maturing  convictions,  although  he 
hoped  much  from  their  suggestiveness  for  our  growing  institutions 
in  America.  Almost  simultaneously  with  this  painstaking  portrayal 
of  these  "experiments  in  living,"  his  notebooks,  from  which  much 
of  the  material  contained  in  this  volume  was  taken,  record  a  sus- 
tained speculative  philosophy,  reminding  one  of  Emerson  in  its 
power  of  synthesis  as  well  as  in  its  style  of  expression. 

Mr.  Lloyd  naturally  turned  to  these  notebooks  for  the  preparation 
of  the  many  addresses  which  he  delivered  during  this  same  period — 
the  last  decade  of  his  life.  Two  of  these,  "  The  New  Conscience- 
and  the  greater  part  of  Chapter  X.,  although  they  have  already  been 
published,  are  included  in  this  book.  The  rest  of  the  material 
familiar  to  Mr.  Lloyd's  many  friends  as  characteristic  of  his  strongest 
convictions  here  appears  in  print  for  the  first  time. 

The  editors  are  conscious  of  many  defects  in  argument  and  lucidity 
which  Mr.  Lloyd  would  certainly  have  remedied  before  publication, 


EDITORS'  NOTE 

but  it  seemed  wiser  to  confine  their  efforts  to  arrangement  and 
selection  rather  than  to  venture  upon  elucidation.  A  certain  lack 
of  definiteness  is  inherent  in  the  nature  of  the  subject  itself.  It  is 
quite  impossible  to  be  exact  in  the  effort  to  trace  the  source  and 
growth  of  religious  motives  in  contemporaneous  society.  The 
editors  believe,  however,  that  the  lack  of  logical  sequence  which  the 
book  presents  is  more  than  balanced  by  the  accumulation  of  proof, 
the  constructive  insight  and  the  knowledge  of  social  forces  which 
it  exhibits,  and  that  in  such  an  undertaking  vagueness  of  expression 
is  preferable  to  dogmatism. 

JANE  ADDAMS. 

ANNE  WITHINGTON. 
August,  1905. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  THE  DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE      ....  3 

II.  SOCIAL  PROGRESS  ALWAYS  RELIGIOUS       ...  29 

III.  MERE   CONTACT  MAKING  FOR  SRIRITUAL  UNION    .  52 

IV.  SOCIAL  LOVE  CREATING  NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  75 
V.  THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE 100 

VI.    NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY         .        .        .        .128 
VII.    NEW  CONSCIENCE  TRANSFORMING  POLITICS — KILLING 

THE  PARTY  SPIRIT 153 

VIII.    THE    NEW    CONSCIENCE    MANIFESTING    ITSELF    IN 

EDUCATIONAL  METHODS  AND  AIMS      .        .        .178 
IX.    A   NEW   POLITICAL   ECONOMY   PREDICTING   A  NEW 

WEALTH 203 

X.    THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED 232 

-   XL    THE  RELIGION  OF  LABOUR       .        .        .        .        .250 


MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 


CHAPTER   I 

DISCOVERY    OF    SOCIAL    LOVE 

MAN  is  a  creator,  and  in  his  province  is  the  creator 
and  redeemer  of  himself  and  society.  He  has  now 
reached  a  point  in  his  experience  in  which  certain  methods 
and  forces  used  by  him  with  progressive  success  in 
the  work  of  social  creation  have  attained  definite  recogni- 
tion. Of  the  enduring  social  institutions  which  man 
has  created  one  after  the  other — the  Family,  Tribe, 
Friendship,  the  Church,  the  Brotherhood,  the  State- 
Love  is  the  motive  power,  and  Reciprocity  the  law. 
The  progressive  discovery  of  new  applications  of  this 
force  and  its  law,  and  the  creation  of  new  social  organs 
for  its  use,  is  civilisation.  In  this  work  the  creator, 
Man,  has  followed  the  evolutionary  line  of  least  resistance 
and  greatest  attraction,  making  one  institution  succeed 
another  in  the  order  indicated  by  the  needs  of  the  people. 
After  the  family,  the  tribe;  after  the  tribe,  the  nation. 
After  slavery,  the  wage  system.  After  monarchy,  the 
republic.  A  variety  of  circumstances  reveals  that  the 
historic  moment  has  struck  for  another  creative  act 
in  this  series  of  progressive  harmonisations — established 
laws  as  calculable  in  their  effects  and  as  trustworthy  as 
any  of  the  laws  of  mechanical  application  or  chemical 
combination.  The  chief  of  these  forces  is  love,  a  natural 
force  which  the  science  of  society  proves  to  develop  as 
certainly  by  the  contact  of  men  with  each  other  as  heat 
or  electricity  by  the  friction  of  matter,  and  points  to 
the  world  of  business  and  industry  as  the  place  where 

3 


4  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

new  multitudes  have  been  brought  into  contact,  and 
Social  love  has  already  well  under  way  its  work  of  making 
this  contact  lasting  by  converting  it  into  association,  or 
organised  friendliness. 

It  is  making  brothers  out  of  competitors,  republi- 
canising  private  wealth  and  power  become  too  vast  for 
private  management,  and  forcing  recognition  as  a  public 
function,  democratising  common  labour  for  common 
welfare,  giving  peace  to  economic  anarchy,  applying  to 
these  industrial  multitudes  the  results  of  past  social 
achievements  in  making  human  intercourse  possible, 
proclaiming  that  in  the  labour  world,  as  everywhere, 
love  is  the  law.  This  is  the  Social  Movement.  For 
this  work  the  Social  Movement  has  inherited  from  the 
previous  institutions  of  applied  social  love  their  accumu- 
lated momentum,  and  it  will  bequeath  an  increased 
energy  which  will  give  the  Family,  the  Church,  the 
Brotherhood  and  the  State  a  new  life. 

There  has  never  been  in  all  history  a  successful  society 
or  government,  not  even  an  institution,  that  sprang 
full-orbed  out  of  some  creative  head.  All  has  been 
growth,  adaptation,  ceaseless  experiments,  countless 
failures.  As  the  present  has  never  been  disconnected 
with  the  past,  the  future  could  be  found  in  the  present, 
had  we  the  eyes  to  see.  "  If  we  separate  it  from  the  past, 
the  present  is  silent  as  to  the  future,"  says  Lamennais. 
What  we  need  is  not  to  attempt  to  strike  out  a  complete 
scheme  of  social  reconstruction  but  by  patient  observa- 
tion see  whether  the  lines  along  which  men  have  been 
moving  are  not  the  lines  along  which  they  are  still  moving, 
and  whether  these  are  not  lines  of  hope  and  progress. 
If  we  find  all  this  to  be  true,  the  gathering  of  the  evidence 
and  the  discovery  to  the  people,  not  out  of  the  dreams 
of  Utopians  but  out  of  their  own  record,  that  they  are 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL   LOVE  5 

moving  forward,  and  how,  and  by  what  law,  can  nave 
no  less  effect  on  the  science  of  society  than  the  similar 
methods  of  physical  investigations  have  had  on  the 
natural  sciences. 

The  fusion  of  men  into  families  and  multitudes  into 
societies  is  the  work  of  a  natural  force.  The  force  is 
called  love.  Love  is  a  word  almost  spoiled  for  use,  and 
demanding  to  be  redeemed.  New  words  have  to  be 
created  as  well  as  old  words  to  be  redeemed.  Twenty- 
three  hundred  years  ago  the  Greek  physicist,  Empedocles, 
guessed  that  the  whole  universe  was  to  be  explained  by 
the  play  upon  its  elements  of  two  forces,  love  the  com- 
bining force,  and  hate  the  separating  force.  Love 
is  a  universal,  most  matter  of  fact,  natural  force,  but  it 
has  been  distorted  into  a  poetic,  supernatural  phantasy 
by  the  vapours  of  its  ecstatic  reporters.  Love  is  not 
defined  by  its  singers ;  it  has  been  so  much  written  around 
and  about,  it  has  been  made  by  the  almost  Bacchanalian 
hyperbolism  even  of  religious  writers  to  seem  something 
far  beyond  common  men  and  common  use.  Not  to 
attempt  a  definition  where  these  great  men  have  feared 
to  tread,  we  might  frame  as  a  working  hypothesis  that 
love  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  one  of  the  natural 
forces.  Its  field  is  the  world  of  life,  as  gravitation  and 
electricity  have  theirs  in  the  world  of  matter.  It  has 
its  good  conductors  in  sympathetic  people  and  free 
institutions.  It  has  its  cataclysmal  manifestations,  the 
outburst  of  affectional  passion,  like  the  discharges  of  a 
thunderstorm  or  the  cyclonic  patriotism  with  which 
the  French  met  the  Allies  in  1793.  It  has  its  steady 
magnetic  flow  in  the  ever-rising  tide  of  the  average 
good  will  among  men;  it  has  its  opposite,  or  negative, 
hate.  Its  laws  are  being  discovered  and  codified  into 
maxims  of  universal  and  practical  use.  It  can  be 


6  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

gathered,  concentrated,  stored,  made  to  do  routine 
work.  It  needs  tools,  machinery,  a  place,  as  much  as 
any  of  the  other  mechanical  forces.  The  social  forms 
embodied  in  good  manners  and  the  constitutions  of 
great  States  are  some  of  these  tools,  machinery.  It 
exists  in  the  natural  reservoirs  of  life  in  inexhaustible 
quantities,  and  its  applications  are  limited  only  by 
the  progress  man  makes  in  providing  taps  and  vessels. 
It  flows  between  all  forms  of  life,  between  man  and  the 
lower  animals,  between  man  and  man,  between  group 
and  group.  It  is  animal,  human,  individual,  social, 
national,  international.  Perhaps,  like  the  phlogiston, 
or  fire  principle  of  the  ancient  philosophers,  it  is  composite, 
a  bunch  of  forces,  not  as  we  are  presenting  it,  something 
elemental.  But  for  our  present  purpose  we  can  describe 
it  as  definitely  proved  by  the  experience  of  mankind 
to  be  a  force,  always  present  with  life,  always  available 
for  work,  and  with  laws  of  its  own  which  make  it  possible 
to  use  it  with  practical  precision. 

Love  flows  from  creature  to  creature,  as  electricity 
from  iron  to  iron.  The  effects  of  heat,  individually,  in 
cheering  our  cold  bodies  and,  collectively,  in  such  organ- 
ised results  as  transportation  and  manufactures,  ara 
not  more  agreeable  and  momentous  than  the  heat  of 
hope  love  gives  on  such  installations  of  love  as  we  see 
in  the  Church,  the  Republic,  International  Arbitration. 
Scientists  hint  at  an  ether  which  pervades  all  matter, 
and  a  force  which  is  the  original  of  all  the  forces  we 
call  by  different  names.  Love  appears  to  be  the  original 
of  all  social  forces.  It  is  the  self-interest  of  the  individual ; 
and,  more,  it  is  the  self-interest  of  the  community;  and, 
more,  it  is  the  loves  and  self-interests  of  the  individuals 
and  communities  harmonised.  It  is  the  creator  and 
reconciler  of  all. 


DISCOVERY  OF   SOCIAL  LOVE  7 

Love  is  a  force  which  does  not  require  either  momentary 
exaltation  or  habitual  elevation  in  order  to  manifest 
itself — though  in  these  it  shows  itself  at  its  best.  It  is 
a  force  which  discloses  itself  whenever  people  come 
together,  and  it  is  at  work  every  day  and  everywhere 
in  society,  as  steadily  and  as  usefully  as  any  of  the 
grosser  forces  which  man  hitches  to  his  wagon.  The 
whole  outward  face  of  our  life  together  is  made  up  of 
the  visible  apparatus  through  which  this  social  steam 
or  magnetism  is  conjured  to  do  its  work.  The  home  is  a 
love  engine;  the  ballot  box  is  another.  The  capitol  is  a 
power  house.  One  of  the  ways  to  develop  heat  or 
electricity  is  by  friction;  a  sure  way  to  set  in  motion 
currents  of  love  is  by  bringing  man  into  contact  with 
man.  Always,  says  Renan,  unity  is  achieved  rudely. 
The  Russian  peasant  stands  in  his  field  with  tears  of 
joyful  worship  on  his  cheeks  as  his  "  Little  White  Father," 
the  Czar,  wheels  by.  The  peasant  is  a  Russian,  the 
Czar  is  a  foreign  Tartar,  and  the  family  ties  are  the 
sword  and  knout,  but  the  peasant  loves  this  Father. 
Over  and  above  and  behind  the  janissaries,  and  standing 
armies,  and  anathemas,  stands  love  as  the  main  current 
of  society.  The  horrors  of  our  Reigns  of  Terrors  and 
Armenian  massacres  evidence  the  price  men  are  willing 
to  pay  for  more  and  better  love.  How  pregnant  with 
proof  of  the  part  of  love  is  the  historic  fact  that  emancipa- 
tion has  never  been  done  by  the  slaves  for  themselves 
but  for  them  by  others. 

The  amount  of  love  lying  latent  in  humanity,  like  the 
amount  of  heat  in  the  ocean  or  electricity  in  the  globe, 
is  not  to  be  calculated.  Enough  to  know  that  it  is 
inexhaustible,  and  that  a  survey  of  all  human  institutions, 
from  the  first  emergence  until  now,  reveals  this  force 
broadening  out  in  its  flow  like  the  widening  dawn  of  a 


8  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

midsummer  day.  One  does  not  need  to  be  a  poet  or 
a  prophet  or  a  martyr  to  seize  this  force  and  use  it — 
only  just  a  common  man.  All  of  us  common  people  are 
using  it,  every  day,  as  part  of  the  commonplace  routine 
of  our  lives,  though  many  of  us  are  as  unconscious  of 
our  secret  as  Holier e's  Jourdain  that  he  was  talking 
prose.  This  love  is  one  of  the  greatest  of  forces  so 
far  discovered.  None  other  has  wrought  changes,  re- 
arrangements, constructions  and  reconstructions  more 
palpable  and  visible  in  the  physical  and  political  life 
of  man;  and  none  other  reaches  up  to  his  spiritual  level 
with  so  rousing  and  quickening  a  reveille  to  resume 
every  day  the  higher  marches  of  the  soul. 

"It  is  better  that  joy  should  be  spread  all  over  the 
day  in  the  form  of  strength  than  that  it  should  be  con- 
centrated into  ecstasies  full  of  danger  and  followed  by 
reactions."  The  truth  is  that  joy  comes  to  us  in  both 
ways,  and  probably  always  will  do  so.  Thus  with  love. 
It  has  its  ecstatic  and  its  steady  manifestations;  its 
statics  and  dynamics.  The  function  of  heat  is  to  over- 
come cold,  to  apply  power ;  of  love,  to  banish  hate,  fear, 
selfishness,  anger,  and  to  unite  men  for  good.  It  is  a 
curious  compensation  that  as  the  world  and  we  lose 
heat,  the  spiritual  tie  of  a  social  love,  not  needing  the 
stimulating  warmth  of  animal  passion,  takes  its  place. 

Love  is  but  one  of  the  forces.  It  is  great,  but  not 
the  greatest.  There  can  be  none  which  is  dispensable, 
but  none  can  be  greatest.  Creation  cannot  be  summed 
up  in  the  phrases  of  any  one  thing.  In  the  court  of 
consciousness  all  the  forces  are  judged,  that  is,  classified 
and  appraised,  and  in  the  office  of  the  will  they  are  all 
used  as  rapidly  as  they  are  understood.  Love  is  the 
heat  of  society.  There  are  those  that  go  through  all 
the  motions  of  love  for  the  form's  sake,  but  they  are 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE  9 

mannikins,  not  men.  Love  therefore  is  undefinable, 
incalculable,  but  none  the  less  real,  none  the  less  usable. 
Like  light,  heat,  music,  it  defies  definition,  but  like  them 
it  serves.  Whether  we  are  to  love,  no  matter  whether 
we  are  not  loved  in  return,  is  not  a  practical  question. 
It  is  the  law  of  love  that  it  calls  forth  love  in  return. 
The  law  on  which  society  is  built  is  that  love  creates  love. 
It  is  as  safe  to  love  as  to  plant  seeds  in  the  garden. 

No  politics  are  true  or  real  except  the  politics  of  love. 
They  are  based  on  the  primal  social  force — love — which 
underlies  all  social  institutions.  We  get  the  community 
by  love;  we  can  run  it  only  by  love.  The  love  is  not 
love  if  it  is  love  with  only  the  Good-will  side  perfect. 
Love  must  be  right  on  all  sides,  it  must  have  Good- 
will, and  it  must  have  science  and  conscience.  That 
which  seems  to  be  love  from  one  point  of  view,  but 
produces  from  another  point  of  view  waste  of  wealth, 
or  from  another  suffering,  or  from  another  social  dis- 
order, is  not  true  love.  The  constant  fear  of  slave 
insurrection  proved  that  the  relations  of  master  and 
slave  in  the  South  were  not  those  of  love;  the  terror 
of  industrial  revolution  disclosed  in  American  society 
by  the  Debs  episode  gave  the  same  information  about 
the  relations  of  employer  and  employed. 

We  have  known  about  love  a  long  time.  Men  knew 
about  heat  and  electricity  from  the  remotest  antiquity. 
But  our  present  civilisation  may  almost  be  said  to  be 
built  on  the  discoveries  of  heat  and  electricity.  In  one 
century  we  have  learned  more  and  done  more  than  in  all 
the  time  before.  Humanity  has  always  known  about 
love,  even  in  its  most  animal  days.  It  is  already  thousands 
of  years  since  we  have  known  of  the  supreme  importance 
of  love  in  personal  and  social  life.  But  is  it  not  being 
made  clear  that  all  this  preliminary  inspiration  is  now 


io  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

to  be  consummated  by  the  discovery  of  love  in  some- 
thing of  the  way  heat,  light  and  electricity  have  been 
recently  discovered  and  applied?  Men  are  at  last 
becoming  conscious  of  love — till  now  a  blind  force. 
They  are  seeing  that  the  socialisations  they  have  ac- 
complished in  their  homes,  their  brotherhoods,  their 
States,  have  been  motived  by  this  greatest  of  all  the 
forces.  Love  has  been  one  of  the  arts ;  it  is  now  passing 
into  the  domain  of  conscious  science.  Men  have  advanced 
in  the  arts  of  social  love  by  groping  forward  from  one 
result  to  another,  comprehending  little  of  the  cause  of 
the  effects.  But  now,  like  the  ancient  philosopher, 
they  are  beginning  to  see  the  cause.  They  are  crying 
"Eureka,  I  have  found  it."  They  are  discovering  that 
this  force  has  been  the  source  of  energy  of  all  those 
social  inventions  they  call  civilisation.  They  are  learning 
its  laws,  and,  from  that  knowledge,  are  endowing  them- 
selves with  the  conscious  creative  power  with  which 
they  can  guide  it  to  new  uses  and  into  new  combinations. 
They  see  that  they  may  rest  in  their  scientific  ability  to 
predict  and  compel  results  instead  of  having,  as  before, 
to  wait  to  stumble  into  them.  Just  before  us  are  as 
great  inventions,  discoveries,  prosperity,  growth,  happi- 
ness, in  the  moral  domain  of  this  social  force,  as  have 
lately  come  to  us  in  the  material  domain  of  mechanical 
force. 

He  is  not  the  leader  who  tells  us  that  love  is  enough,  is 

'  all,  is  the  law,  is  life,  is  God.  He  is  the  leader  who 
guides  us  to  the  next  application  of  these  thousands-of- 
years-old  truisms  in  the  affairs  of  to-day.  He  is  the 
wise  man  who  can  tell  us  what  answer  this  law  of  love 
makes  to  the  special  problem,  the  social  life  of  our  time. 

'  He  is  the  statesman  who  will  contrive  the  institution 
by  which  the  love  latent  in  the  people  can  be  set  to  work 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE  n 

in  the  regions  of  contact  where  now  hate  rules,  and  he 
the  saviour  who  can  persuade  the  people  to  enter  it. 
We  have  understood  for  a  long,  long  time  that  God 
was  love.  What  we  want  now  to  know  is  how  to  get 
this  God  at  work  doing  the  chore  of  to-day — putting 
an  end  to  the  war,  waste,  anarchy,  grief,  of  the  business 
world. 

Human  and  social  love  has  always  expanded  to  the 
full  dimensions  of  the  territory  of  contact.  It  as  easily 
fills  the  continent  of  America  with  the  love  of  country 
as  the  little  cabin  with  love  of  home.  This  love  of  man 
for  man  is  foredestined  to  crown  and  consummate  the 
apprenticeship  in  the  family,  the  guild,  the  city,  the 
nation,  the  Church,  by  widening  into  the  love  of  all  for 
all  men — the  love  of  Humanity.  This  is  guaranteed  to 
it  by  all  the  words  that  have  become  sacred  in  the  history 
of  association — Brother,  Patriot,  Friend.  These  are 
but  tests  of  the  ability  of  love  to  expand  like  the  magic 
tent  in  the  "Arabian  Nights"  to  any  size  necessary 
to  contain  whatever  number  of  men  there  be  seeking 
shelter.  Man  is  not  to  be  a  loving  animal;  but  is  one. 
From  the  simple  hearthstone  up  to  the  magnificent 
Capitol  man  has  always  organised  his  love.  This  he  is 
about  to  do  now  in  the  new  territories  of  contact  opened 
by  the  industrial  revolution.  This  special  task  is  the 
Labour  movement.  The  present  hatreds,  anarchies, 
waste  of  good-will  and  waste  of  wealth  are  but  passing 
phenomena  of  the  transition  into  a  new  social  order. 
In  its  previous  creations  of  organised  love  to  rule  men 
in  the  territories  of  contact  mankind  has  been  doing 
laboratory  work.  The  family,  the  nation,  have  been 
experiments  on  a  small  scale  with  the  forces  which  are 
now  to  be  applied  universally.  The  family,  the  nation, 
are  true  facts  and  will  be  eternal;  but  they  are  members 


12  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

of  a  series  which  will  express  its  highest  term  in  a  still 
greater  fact.  The  mission  of  the  individual  and  the 
race  is  to  create.  Individuality  and  association  are 
means;  each  of  equal  dignity,  each  indispensable.  Once 
man  and  men  see  the  grandeur  of  the  destiny  before 
them,  life  will  never  again  seem  cold  or  narrow,  dis- 
couraging or  uninspired.  This  is  an  aim  which  makes 
life  divine.  Infinite  are  the  allurements,  the  joys,  the 
problems,  the  solutions,  the  prizes  of  life  thus  lived. 
Ours  is  the  era  of  the  new  Newton  who  will  work  out  the 
attraction  of  men  for  each  other  as  the  gravitating  force 
which  explains  the  position,  motion  and  relations  of  the 
social  atoms  and  the  social  masses.  New  Galileos  will 
show  that  it  is  Humanity  moves,  not  that  which  has 
seemed  to  be  the  centre  of  its  revolutions.  A  new 
Jenner,  a  new  Harvey,  will  show  a  circulation  of  the 
blood  of  all  Humanity  from  a  common  heart.  Men 
need  no  kings,  no  priests,  no  lords,  no  landlords.  You 
stand  at  last  revealed  to  yourselves.  The  works  of 
thousands  of  years  have  at  last  brought  you  out  of  the 
childhood  into  the  manhood  of  the  race.  The  youth  now 
knows  that  he  is  to  be  a  man — the  man  called  Million, 
the  Son  of  Man,  the  Man  of  Man — and  his  prime  still 
lies  before  him. 

The  law  to  love  one  another  is  the  law  of  service,  and 
service  calls  for  service.  The  Golden  Rule  cannot  be 
applied  to  human  life  in  any  other  way  than  to  call  upon 
everyone  who  receives  the  results  of  labour  to  labour 
in  his  turn.  Mazzini  said,  "Let  labour  be  the  basis 
of  civil  society."  It  must  also  be  the  basis  of  religion. 
It  is  such ;  what  remains  is  that  we  so  recognise  it.  The 
labourer  is  the  creator;  the  labourer  is  the  lover.  He 
is  the  re-maker  of  man,  nature  and  society;  he  is  the  one 
who  comes  to  serve,  who  does  the  things  that  he  would 


DISCOVERY  OF   SOCIAL  LOVE  13 

have  done  to  him,  who  makes  possible  life  which  is  love 
incarnated,,  who  is  the  Prince  of  Peace. 

As  labour  is  creation,  by  labour  men  are  divine  and 
become  godlike.  As  labour  is  service,  by  labour  men 
do  unto  each  other  as  they  ought  and  enter  heaven. 
Love  for  the  people  has  one  of  its  roots,  though  not  the 
greatest  root,  in  the  fact  that  the  body  of  the  common 
people  is  the  reservoir  in  which  is  gathered  up  the  creative 
energy  of  society,  and  that  out  of  it  flow  the  streams 
of  power  and  progress.  All  the  great,  beautiful  and 
brilliant  ones  have  their  roots  in  that  deep,  rich  mother 
soil  of  humanity,  and  draw  from  the  common  source 
that  which  makes  them  different  for  the  moment  from 
the  commonalty.  It  is  not  from  themselves  but  from 
all  that  they  get  their  distinction.  They  are  the  efflores- 
cence of  the  common  genius.  All  that  they  have  they 
owe.  In  the  very  act  of  struggling  to  discriminate  them- 
selves from  the  mass  they  pay  their  debt,  when  some 
of  them  think  to  repudiate  it,  for  it  is  their  function 
to  move  forward  the  goals  which  later  the  mass  will 
reach.  Even  the  luxury  of  the  Oriental  tyrant  and  the 
modern  monopolist  serves  the  cause  by  illustrating 
the  opulence  within  the  reach  of  co-operated  service. 
The  world  has  been  growing  an  Eye  which  watches  and 
notes  that  co-operation  is  the  secret  of  opulence;  and  a 
spreading  wit  is  apprehending  that  the  tyrant  and 
monopolist  could  be  taken  and  the  co-operation  left, 
and  that  when  the  compulsion  and  selfishness  were  less 
the  opulence  would  be  more. 

All — all  the  individuals  in  their  private  life,  and  all 
the  groups  in  their  social  life — are  shutting  themselves 
out  of  vast  Elysian  fields  of  felicity  by  denying  Brother- 
hood,   Humanity,    the    People,    Equality,    Fraternity 
Liberty,  in  the  world  of  labour,  where  the  multitude  are 


i4  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

as  yet  co-operating  blindly.  Here  treasures  incalculable 
are  waiting  to  be  divided,  and  unless  we  divide  we  need 
not  take  the  trouble  to  discover,  for  they  are  treasures 
only  if  divided.  The  inspiring  belief,  the  idea  that 
shines  with  the  light  of  truth;  the  school  of  thought 
which  makes  the  social  movement  an  affirmation,  not  a 
negation;  a  ferment,  not  a  remnant;  an  evolution  of 
social  progress,  not  a  mere  constitutional  opposition, 
is  this,  that  the  people  in  industry  are  destined  to  achieve 
social  order.  The  world  in  the  last  two  or  three  hundred 
years  has  had  a  great  pull  of  material  progress.  Now 
is  to  come  the  compensating  moral  hitch  forward.  The 
picture  Wordsworth  saw  and  sung  in  the  Highlands: 
"The  maids  at  the  wheel,  the  weaver  at  his  loom,  sat 
blithe  and  happy,"  was  a  picture  which  had  been  seen 
and  sung  by  the  poets  for  thousands  of  years  back  to 
the  Egyptian  dawn,  but  now  to  be  seen  by  poets  and 
others  no  more.  Our  century  has  swallowed  up  the 
tools,  habits,  institutions,  which  had  descended  through 
hundreds  of  centuries  almost  unchanged.  Now,  in  the 
century  to  come,  it  is  the  turn  of  the  moral,  social 
Watts,  Arkwrights,  Stephensons,  Franklins,  Morses,  who 
will  save  this  wealth  by  inventing  the  forms  of  political 
Christianity,  organised  love,  economic  patriotism,  in- 
dustrial religion.  The  steam  horse,  on  which  the  few 
Captains  of  Industry  have  ridden  into  unheard  of  power, 
like  its  predecessor,  the  horse  on  which  the  strong  men 
of  the  Middle  Ages  rode  over  the  people  and  into  the 
castles  of  chivalry,  will  finally  pass  into  the  service  of 
all — fortunate  if,  like  chivalry,  it  commemorates  itself 
by  adding  to  the  language  of  men  a  word  of  noble  sense, 
impelling  men  forever  along  lines  of  tender  helpfulness. 
The  Labour  movement  i§  the  travail  of  the  international 
multitudes  now  in  industrial  contact  to  make  the  contact 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE  15 

a  society.  There  have  been  achieved  many  imperfect 
societies.  The  history  of  the  evolution  of  the  family 
shows  a  number  of  variations,  as  polyandry,  before  our 
form  was  adopted.  So  slavery,  the  guilds,  the  wage 
system,  have  broken  down.  Industrial  contact  has  still 
to  find  the  forms  in  which  it  can  rest.  Everything  is 
in  flight,  as  all  the  thinkers  from  Aristotle  to  Emerson 
have  told  us,  but  withal  we  do  reach  finalities.  The 
spirit  of  man,  after  thousands  of  variations  during 
millions  of  years,  has  achieved  a  physical  investiture 
which  our  evolutionists  tell  us  is  final  as  to  its  general 
outlines.  Development  marks  off  its  eras  by  the  types 
it  produces.  It  does  not  seem  rash  to  believe  that  the 
family  of  husband  and  wife,  the  state  of  a  self-governing 
republic,  are  as  surely  finalities  in  social  forms  as  the 
figure  of  man  in  physical  forms.  But  our  tumults  show 
that  the  industrial  form  of  society  is  manifestly  yet  to 
be  created.  The  Labour  movement  is  the  belief  that 
there  is  to  be  such  a  final  form,  and  that  people  who 
have  established  so  many  pacifications  of  intercourse 
will  find  a  way  to  perform  in  peace  the  reciprocities 
by  which  we  serve  each  other's  material  needs.  One 
assurance  that  they  will  do  this  is  that  they  are  now 
trying  to  do  it.  The  aspiration  for  this  peace,  the  loathing 
for  stupidities  and  cruelties  which  convert  a  struggle  for 
life  into  a  struggle  for  death,  is  the  clearest  note  in  the 
literature  of  our  times.  The  word  that  needs  to  be 
spoken  now  is  a  reassuring  word  of  true  conservatism. 
There  is  so  much  loose  talk  of  Revolution  and  Anarchy 
in  society,  literature  and  politics  that  the  people  shake 
themselves  every  morning  when  they  wake  up  to  see 
if  their  heads  will  roll  off.  Another  Reign  of  Terror 
is  not  before  us.  It  is  here  in  this  state  of  mind.  It 
does  not  take  many  cries  of  "Fire!"  to  start  a  panic 


16  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

in  a  theatre.  Some  of  the  people  are  becoming  so 
hysterical  that  they"  hear  the  drop  of  the  guillotine  in 
every  slamming  door,  and  think  every  workingman  is 
a  revolutionist  at  heart.  All  this  is  unnecessary.  Our 
civilisation  is  not  a  failure ;  it  does  not  have  to  be  turned 
back;  it  needs  only  to  be  carried  further  along  its  own 
path.  We  need  no  revolution,  only  the  next  step  in 
evolution  and  historic  development.  We  do  not  need 
to  retrace,  unlearn,  destroy,  but  to  go  on,  do  more,  study 
the  same  things,  but  harder.  The  strings  in  our  hands 
by  which  we  have  felt  our  way  along  so  far  through  our 
labyrinth  are  the  leading-strings  of  progress,  and  we 
have  but  to  follow  the  same  strings  farther  on.  Our 
schools,  our  churches,  our  states,  our  corporations,  our 
families,  these  great  achievements  of  the  genius  of  the 
past  that  has  died  for  us  are  right;  not  wrong,  only  not 
right  enough.  But  they  are  starting  points,  not  resting 
places.  We  have  but  to  carry  along  their  increasing 
purpose.  These  institutions  have  been  created;  that 
work  is  done.  We  start  from  that.  Our  work  is  not 
to  create  but  to  continue  one  or  two  simple  principles  of 
sympathy  and  self-interest.  Love  and  hate  have  been 
at  work  creating  and  recreating  society  as  far  back  as 
we  can  see  society.  These  principles  we  ought  now 
to  be  able  to  look  upon  with  as  familiar  and  friendly  eyes 
as  upon  the  tides,  or  the  winds,  or  fire.  We  may  believe 
we  know  that  the  furthest  progress  of  the  race  will  still 
be  contained  within  the  forms  of  the  school,  the  capitol, 
the  church,  the  home,  the  club,  the  market — enlarged, 
enriched,  not  revolutionised.  The  future — any  future 
within  our  contemplation — will  not  uproot  them.  It 
will  seek  to  express  through  them  more  perfectly  the 
realities  they  were  formed  to  express.  It  will  preserve 
these  forms,  as  the  science  of  health  preserves  our  bodies, 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE  17 

by  not  holding  the  form  more  sacred  than  the  purpose, 
and  by  making  the  body  serve  the  soul. 

The  old  theologians  spoke  in  every  accent  of  suffering 
and  joyless  despair.  Even  a  prophet  of  the  people  like 
Lamennais,  writing  as  late  as  1833,  sends  up  cry  upon 
cry  to  the  Lord,  in  the  name  of  the  misery  of  the  world. 
The  bottomless  melancholy  of  the  old  music  is  a  strain 
of  the  same  sadness  of  mankind  struggling  and  not  yet 
certain  of  itself.  But  there  is  a  gospel  of  glad  tidings. 
Evil  is  being  overcome  with  good.  An  American  can 
travel  six  thousand  miles  across  the  earth's  surface  and 
find  brothers,  and  none  but  brothers  and  fellow  citizens 
and  fellow  defenders  all  along  the  line.  The  Republic 
has  not  ceased  to  spread  for  twenty-five  hundred  years. 
Since  it  began  in  the  hearts  of  those  Greeks,  who  thought 
slavery  must  be  wrong  because  it  held  one  man  to  another 
by  force,  the  abolition  of  slavery  has  gone  on  for  nearly 
three  thousand  years.  Now  the  lash  is  heard  in  only 
one  or  two  corners.  The  secret  of  the  joy  of  life  which 
made  existence  an  ecstasy  for  the  Athenians  of  the  days 
of  Pericles,  it  is  beginning  to  be  seen,  is  one  which  all 
men  can  guess.  The  joy  of  the  hundred  thousand 
freemen  of  Athens  was  always  bitter  with  fear,  for  washing 
at  its  foundation  were  the  tears  of  five  hundred  thousand 
slaves.  It  has  now  been  found  that  the  slaves  and  the 
freemen  can  have  the  same  social  joys,  and  the  tears  and 
the  fears  cease  forever.  We  can  travel  from  smile  to 
smile  all  the  way  around  the  globe.  Music  is  growing 
gay,  armour  is  thrown  off,  leprosy  has  disappeared 
from  Europe.  There  has  been  a  Conference  of  Inter- 
national Arbitration.  The  flagellants  ride  the  bicycle 
and  bask  on  the  countryside.  Terror  after  terror 
disappears.  Anti-toxin  abolishes  the  terror  of  diptheria; 
the  Pasteur  treatment  that  of  hydrophobia,  The  terror 


1 8  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

of  being  found  reading  the  Bible,  of  having  your  child 
torn  away  from  your  arms  to  be  sold  into  slavery — a 
whole  brood  of  terrors  have  evacuated  the  human  mind 
forever. 

Many  good  souls  are  distressed  by  the  question :  What 
will  keep  men  straight  when  this  terror  of  starvation,  of 
bankruptcy,  of  the  poorhouse,  is  taken  away.  Every 
terror  that  has  been  abolished,  once  it  is  gone  is  seen 
to  have  become  superfluous,  however  it  may  have  been 
needed.  Our  school  children  behave  better  and  learn 
more  without  the  whip  than  with  it.  The  labourer 
does  not  need  the  lash  and  slave  pen  that  Plato  thought 
he  did.  Now  we  know  that  war,  slavery,  tyranny, 
poverty,  disease,  are  doomed.  Every  foot  bruises  their 
heads.  We  know  that  if  we  see  misery  it  is  because  we 
are  looking  back.  Looking  forward,  we  see  the  certainties 
of  myriads  of  joy.  We  cannot  go  so  far  back  as  to  find 
a  time  that  was  not  better  than  the  times  before  it. 
We  can  not  go  forward  to  an  ideal  beyond  which 
there  will  not  be  something  better.  The  was  is  bad; 
the  is  is  good;  the  will  be  is  better.  The  best 
will  never  defeat  itself  by  surrendering  to  be  caught. 
We  who  have  been  capable  of  the  love  of  brother  for 
brother  can  fly  the  flag  of  a  Patriotism  of  the  great 
globe  itself.  We  have  learned  to  say  American  to  each 
other — we,  the  Ethiopian  of  Alabama  and  South  Carolina ; 
the  French  of  Louisiana;  the  Spaniard  of  Florida  and 
California ;  the  Onondagas  and  the  Cherokees,  the  Dutch, 
the  Germans,  the  English,  the  Slavs,  the  Italians.  This 
is  the  augury  of  the  day  when  all  the  nations,  whose 
members  find  it  possible  to  call  each  other  here  by  one 
name,  will  create  some  word  of  association  which  will 
make  one  Home  of  America  and  Europe,  Asia  and 
Africa.  The  material  unification  in  this  direction  has 


DISCOVERY  OF   SOCIAL  LOVE  19 

gone  far.  The  spiritual  union  must  follow,  and  is  on  the 
point  of  striking  its  tents. 

Unless  universal  extinction  is  conceivable,  we  shall 
always  have  struggle,  competition,  war;  never  unity, 
rest,  peace.  Always  movement  forward,  always  one 
force  or  goal  playing  against  another;  always  a  strength 
to  overcome  to  give  us  strength.  But  as  man  has 
become  wiser  and  tenderer,  competition  has  been  changing 
before  our  eyes.  It  has  become  the  competition  of  a 
universal  trade  which  is  taking  the  place,  and  rapidly, 
of  the  competition  of  war  once  universal.  War  was 
destructive;  trade  is  much  more  constructive.  A  co- 
operative political  economy  will  not  banish  competition, 
but  will  make  it  progressively  more  a  competition  to 
create  livelihood,  property,  opportunity  for  all  in  the 
best  ways.  The  strong  man  still  seeks  command,  but 
his  Power  gets  its  mate  Rule,  not  by  the  rape  of  the 
Sabines  but  by  courtship.  At  this  moment,  and  in  the 
social  world,  the  need  is  to  emphasise  love,  the  force 
which  unites.  The  opposite,  the  force  that  separates, 
self-interest,  individualism,  competition,  is  as  eternal,  as 
necessary,  as  beneficent  as  the  other,  but  it  has  had  too 
long  a  day.  It  has  swung  the  world  of  labour  to  one 
side.  For  our  tasks  and  for  our  times,  even  if  we,  re- 
acting, exaggerate  love,  we  shall  be  right.  This  pendula- 
tion  is  as  much  the  mode  of  social  progress  as  it  is  of 
the  individual  to  walk  by  falling  first  to  the  right,  then 
to  the  left.  The  age  of  the  glowing  geniuses  who  first 
saw  and  reported  love  has  past.  It  cannot  be  that  we 
shall  ever  again  have  the  fire  of  its  first  teachers.  The 
Christ  to-day  is  not  the  incarnation  who  is  repeating 
the  Golden  Rule  but  the  incarnation  of  those  who  are 
living  it. 

We  have  come  to  know  that  the  Bible  is  the  condensa- 


20  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

tion  of  a  vast  literature,  itself  condensing  vast  volumes 
of  human  experience.  Jesus  we  know  gave  a  new  art 
and  a  new  sweetness  of  note  to  the  prayers,  parables 
and  golden  rules  which  had  been  waiting  for  centuries 
for  the  master  who  would  mould  them  to  their  last 
perfection  of  form — the  Shakespeare  of  Ethics.  He 
generalised  countless  scrolls  of  vellum  and  papyri  and 
tradition  into  a  few  sentences  to  shine  forever.  A  new 
modern  literature  of  compassion,  progress,  emancipation, 
is  pouring  out  of  the  hearts  and  minds  of  all  Christendom, 
and  waits  for  the  genius  who  can  so  distill  its  essence, 
for  those  to  follow  who  have  to  live  it  in  the  more  difficult 
synthesis — the  synthesis  of  deeds. 

The  deed  of  saying  has  been  done,  and  done  with  a 
perfection  none  can  hope  to  rival.  What  the  world 
waits  for  is  the  deed  of  doing.  Revolutions  never  cease 
to  move  forward.  The  mind  of  man  once  it  has  won 
its  point  does  not  dwell  there.  The  step  it  is  taking 
is  always  the  next  step.  There  was  once  a  revelation  to 
man  of  fire,  as  more  lately  of  love.  We  can  imagine  the 
kindling  zeal  of  the  first  bringers  to  man  of  the  new 
truth  of  life  by  fire.  We  can  rehearse  the  whole  drama, 
the  cry  of  anarchy  raised  by  those  who  held  the  high 
places  by  virtue  of  their  superior  administration  of  the 
flints,  the  bones,  the  skins,  the  cold  chops  of  the  life 
without  fire,  which  had  been  "good  enough  for  our 
ancestors,"  and  on  which  "law  and  order"  and  religion 
itself  rested;  the  martyrdoms,  the  universal  adoption  at 
last  of  the  rejected  innovation;  finally  the  consecration 
of  fire,  the  worship  of  it,  and  the  never-dying  lamps 
hanging  in  the  temples  of  the  world  to  this  day  to  prove 
that  the  Church  was  the  original  source  of  this  blessing, 
and  that  the  priests  had  from  the  first  been  its  special 
guardians.  That  which  was  once  the  prerogative  of 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE  21 

the  gods  only — to  strike  fire — any  common  man  can  do 
now.  The  era  when  fire  was  so  new  that  men  knelt 
to  it  and  its  great  solar  symbol  in  adoration,  and  the  poets 
and  possessed  ones  rhapsodised  over  it  is  so  recent  in 
human  development  that  it  really  belongs  to  modern 
times.  We  are  just  passing  out  of  a  corresponding 
phase  in  the  domestication  of  love.  Love  needs  now 
to  be  discussed  in  matter-of-fact  language,  as  if  it  were 
mechanics,  or  arithmetic,  or  housekeeping.  The  im- 
passioned, hyperbolical,  capitalised  way  in  which  love 
is  commonly  spoken  of  has  the  effect  of  mystifying 
plain  people,  and  keeping  alive  the  superstition  that 
love  is  something  sacred,  not  of  the  day,  beyond  man. 
We  are  but  just  escaped  from  the  heroic  days,  when 
every  flash  of  love  we  saw  on  earth  we  ascribed  to  a  god. 
Still  ringing  in  our  ears  are  the  intoxicated  accents  of 
the  seers  to  whom  was  revealed  that  love  was  of  man, 
and  that  it  flowed  through  human  nature  in  inexhaustible 
streams  waiting  to  be  tapped  for  every  social  service. 
Now  is  beginning  for  us  the  more  practical  age,  and  also 
the  richer,  which  is  to  apply  the  new  force  more  and 
more  universally  and  to  enjoy  its  fruits.  The  poetic 
and  prophetic  energy  which  flashed  out  the  first  divinations 
of  love  was  more  intense,  no  doubt,  than  this  of  ours. 
But  our  descended  and  correlated  energy,  which  is  putting 
the  fire  to  all  the  uses  of  common  life,  in  great  departments 
and  small,  in  public  and  private,  has  as  high  a  power, 
even  though  it  shines  with  less  brilliancy,  or  even  though 
it  may  not,  thus  diffused,  shine  at  all. 

The  greatest  leaders  have  been  the  men  who  have 
preached  love  most  persuasively  to  the  world.  That 
work  has  been  done.  What  we  need  to-day  is  the  historian 
of  humanity,  the  philosopher  of  the  true  society,  who 
will  discover  to  men  how  great  is  the  extent  to  which 


22  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

they  are  living  love.  These  will  point  out  to  men  that 
the  measure  of  happiness  and  success  they  have  attained 
— their  civilisation — has  been  due  to  their  observance  of 
love,  as  the  law,  to  their  organization  of  the  spirit  of 
association,  friendliness,  into  institutions.  Any  region  of 
human  propinquity  in  which  love  has  not  been  thus  institu- 
tionalised, as  in  the  region  from  Calcutta  to  London, 
where  the  Hindoos  produce  wealth  and  the  English 
consume  it,  or  the  region  between  the  wheat  fields  of 
Dakota  and  the  Chicago  Board  of  Trade,  or  the  region 
between  the  orange  growers  of  California  and  the  New 
York  offices  and  palaces  of  the  Southern  Pacific  Railroad 
— the  region  between  the  poor  and  the  rich — is  a  region 
as  yet  outside  of  civilisation,  an  exception  to  the  law 
of  progress,  a  continent  we  have  not  yet  surveyed,  a  No 
Man's  Land.  The  new  prophets  will  make  men  under- 
stand that  the  discords,  poverties,  of  our  era  do  not  call 
for  the  destruction  of  our  institutions  but  for  their 
extension  to  new  provinces  of  human  contact — labour, 
business.  Our  concern  now  is  not  to  add  a  new  felicity, 
if  that  were  possible,  to  the  Golden  Rule,  which  his 
reporters  show  grew  even  as  it  came  over  the  lips  of 
Jesus.  It  is  not  now  our  concern  "  to  the  souls  of 
fire  to  give  more  fire"  to  keep  that  commandment. 
We  are  studying  here,  not  as  poets,  prophets  or  priests. 
Ours  now  only  the  prosaic  task  of  the  scientific  investi- 
gator who  recognises  in  the  fact  that  men  say  and  do  these 
things  a  phenomenon,  and  sets  himself  to  the  study  of 
it.  The  genius  of  great  institutions — whole  groups  of 
institutions — can  be  traced  back  through  the  actions 
of  the  people  of  one  day  to  the  words  of  the  people  of 
the  day  before,  as  the  group  we  call  the  United  States  had 
its  origin  in  the  words  of  the  generation  of  Paine,  Jefferson, 
Rousseau,  which  had  their  roots  in  still  older  soil.  The 


DISCOVERY  OF  SOCIAL  LOVE  23 

fact,  therefore,  that  the  mind  of  man  has  expressed  itself 
in  such  utterance  as  this  of  the  Golden  Rule  is  a  phenome- 
non as  distinct  and  important  as  the  falling  of  an  apple. 
Here  is  the  clue  for  the  Newton  who  is  searching  out  the 
laws  of  society.  The  Golden  Rule  is  full  of  suggestion. 
The  mind  which  uttered  it  in  its  first  form,  as  far  back 
as  Leviticus  or  Confucius,  and  no  one  knows  how  long 
before,  was  one  of  those  able  minds  which  had  eyes  to 
see  and  saw  the  processes  by  which  even  in  those  tribal 
days  men  were  being  united  together.  The  acceptance 
of  the  rule  by  every  generation  since,  as  the  highest  ideal 
of  social  conduct,  justifies  the  statement  that  the  social 
institutions  by  which  men  have  provided  the  ways  and 
means  for  the  common  life  will  be  found  in  their  last 
analysis  to  have  been  built  by  this  rule,  however  im- 
perfectly they  may  embody  it.  From  the  study  of  this 
"law  of  nature"  and  of  the  natural  objects,  social  institu- 
tions which  illustrate  it,  we  may  deduce  that  it  is  an 
exact  law  of  universal  jurisdiction,  and  can  predict  that 
it  will  shape  institutions  in  the  future  as  it  has  done  in 
the  past. 

The  scientific  sociologist  does  not  come  to  exhort  men 
to  love ;  love  can  take  care  of  itself.  He  comes  to  report 
to  men  that  since  their  affairs  have  brought  them  into 
propinquity  they  surely  will  love,  and  to  warn  those 
standing  between  who  think  to  prevent  the  union  to 
get  out  of  the  way.  Love,  like  primitive  law,  sanitation, 
architecture,  all  art  and  science,  was  a  monopoly  of 
the  gods.  The  ancient  mythologies  correctly  represent 
men  as  fighting  against  their  deities.  Men  made  law 
a  science  by  driving  their  gods  off  the  bench  of  the  law- 
giver and  seating  themselves  there.  As  law  has  done,  so 
must  religion  do,  cease  to  become  the  voice  of  a  hidden 
God  and  become  the  voice  of  the  people.  One  by  one 


24  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

all  the  sciences  have  been  found  to  be  of  man,  for  man. 
The  dove  sellers  and  money  changers  have  been  driven 
out  of  the  temple.  Love,  too,  has  been  taken  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  gods,  like  fire,  and  put  to  the  daily  drudgery 
of  house  and  field  work  for  which  it  was  meant.  Man 
will  preserve  religion  and  patriotism,  no  matter  how 
many  churches  and  governments  he  has  to  destroy  in 
the  defence.  Our  special  task  is  to  iterate  and  reiterate 
to  the  people  that  Society  is  organised  love,  and  the 
Golden  Rule  its  law.  Though  this  may  not  be  the 
whole  truth,  it  is  the  half  which  now  needs  to  be  swung 
forward  in  the  compensatory  balance.  The  people 
have  been  lied  to.  They  have  been  degraded  by  the 
theologies  and  political  economies  which  have  told  them 
that  they  were  bad,  and  that,  do  their  utmost,  they 
could  not  organise  their  daily  lives  on  any  nobler  belief. 
The  people  have  never  wholly  believed  it,  they  have 
never  mixed  their  daily  bread  with  the  slime  of  total 
depravity  or  self-interest.  Man's  nature  to  good,  says 
Mencius,  is  like  the  tendency  of  water  to  flow  downward. 
There  are  none  but  have  this  tendency  to  good,  just  as 
all  water  flows  downward. 

Death,  silencing  calumny,  ending  strife,  stopping  envy, 
giving  pause  for  thought,  reveals  to  us  in  our  new  ap- 
preciation of  the  virtues  of  the  dead  how  much  better 
mankind  succeeds  in  being  than  the  common  report  of 
the  living  about  the  living  would  have  us  believe.  This 
lesson  repeated  at  every  death  will  some  day  convince 
us  that  we  are  all  better  than  we  have  thought  ourselves 
to  be. 

But  the  ceaseless  repetition  of  the  lie — of  total  depravity 
— has  depressed  us  bitterly  and  lowered  the  level  of 
human  life  along  the  whole  line  from  the  family  to  the 
nation.  Men  are  longing  now  to  hear  the  glad  tidings 


25 

of  the  truth  that  man  is  a  loving  animal.  The  future 
belongs  to  the  leaders  who  will  cheer  men  with  the  proof, 
from  man's  own  history,  that  they  do  love.  They  have 
been  cast  down  long  enough  with  the  exhortation  that 
they  ought  to  love,  with  the  implication  that  they  never 
can,  because  that  is  possible  to  God  alone.  Over  and 
over  again  let  us  tell  men  that  it  is  love  by  which  they 
live  to-day  in  every  association  which  has  made  life 
together  practical  and  profitable;  that  love  is  one  of  the 
universal  forces,  like  gravitation,  intelligence,  electricity, 
heat,  inexhaustible;  that  society  is  on  the  eve  of  the 
social  inventions  which  will  make  this  once  wonder, 
even  terror,  of  the  skies  the  commonplace  motor  for 
the  service  of  all.  We  are  in  travail  to  stretch  our  powers 
of  tribal  patriotism  up  to  the  possibilities  of  international 
love.  The  most  practical  of  men,  Turgot  in  France  and 
Stein  in  Germany,  attributed  the  evils  of  their  time  to 
selfishness.  This  was  their  way  of  saying  what  the 
prophets  and  poets  have  always  said,  that  unselfishness, 
that  is  love,  is  the  true  law  of  social  life. 

Its  patriotisms  are  the  best  exhibits  of  social  love  to-day. 
One  would  expect  the  religious  tie,  as  the  broadest  bond 
of  union,  to  be  the  highest  illustration  of  social  love. 
Christian  German  fights  with  Christian  Frenchman,  or 
Christian  Englishman  with  Christian  Boer,  and  each 
appeals  to  the  God  of  Battles  as  "Our  God."  The  sense 
of  fellowship  of  Baptist  with  Baptist  or  Catholic  with 
Catholic  is  not  as  intense  and  real  as  that  of  Englishman 
with  Englishman  or  American  with  American.  The 
communicant,  individually,  or  the  Church,  collectively, 
hears  with  little  loss  of  equanimity  of  misadventures  to 
fellow  worshippers  in  other  lands,  as  in  Armenia  to-day, 
which  if  done  to  the  fellow  citizen  would  call  a  nation  to 
arms.  Whether  because  church  people  have  not  yet 


26  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

come  to  think  of  each  other  as  members  of  one  another 
in  this  life  but  only  in  the  life  to  come,  or  for  whatever 
reason,  political  love,  patriotism,  radiates  with  a  higher 
and  more  practical  efficiency  than  does  religious  love. 
And  this  patriotism  is  an  artificial  tie.  There  is  not 
a  "nation"  in  the  world  whose  political  boundaries  are 
not  arbitrary,  almost  fortuitous,  and  whose  patriotism 
must  not  therefore  be  ascribed  to  something  deeper  and 
broader  than  the  ethnic  ties.  The  French  are  not  all 
French,  the  English  not  all  English,  and  as  for  the 
Americans,  of  what  tribe  or  race  are  they?  Patriotism 
in  fact  is  one  of  the  temporary  and  intermediate  phenom- 
ena of  social  love.  Bring  men  together  within  any 
enclosure  and  their  hearts  will  at  once  begin  to  flow 
together  up  to  that  line.  Patriotism  is  our  present 
resting  place  on  the  way  to  the  love  of  all  men.  We 
have  got  so  far.  The  old  cosmopolitanism  of  Lessing 
and  Rousseau  and  the  eighteenth-century  philosophers 
was  a  castle  in  the  air.  It  thought  to  build  up  the  love 
of  humanity  without  putting  in  the  foundations  of  love 
of  country.  The  new  cosmopolitanism  of  Mazzini  and 
Marx,  which  our  times  are  evolving,  rests  on  the  nations 
as  its  corner  stones,  and  its  nations  run  their  conscious 
roots  back  into  the  community,  the  family,  the  individual, 
as  indestructible  terms  in  the  progressive  series  of  social 
love — the  first  of  the  series  as  indispensable  as  the  last, 
without  individualism  no  humanity,  without  humanity 
no  individualism.  A  love  of  humanity  in  which  all  the 
loves  of  tribe,  of  country,  even  of  self,  are  not  still  shining, 
and  shining  brighter  and  stronger  than  when  alone,  is 
a  chain  without  links.  Patriotism  is  a  coalescence  of 
little  local  loves.  As  each  of  them  was  a  preparation  for 
something  larger,  patriotism  is  the  school  of  the  greater 
tie  that  will  bind  nations  together  in  the  larger  groups,  of 


DISCOVERY  OP  SOCIAL  LOVE  27 

which  intimations  are  already  to  be  seen  in  the  Dreibunds, 
Holy  Alliances,  Pan-American  Alliances,  etc. 

It  is  because  they  could  love  that  men  have  been  able 
to  organise  the  home,  the  representative  government. 
This  love  is  the  precursor  of  the  larger  love  that  is  destined 
to  show  in  larger  associations.  Your  love  for  your 
brother  playmate  is  the  bud  out  of  which  shall  flower 
the  love  that  will  embrace  all  your  brothers  of  humanity. 
Brotherhood  is  not  a  dream  of  enthusiasts,  but  the 
paramount  and  growing  fact  of  existing  society.  The 
ideal  comes  first,  the  details  are  filled  later.  Tens  of 
thousands  of  men  who  cannot  live  at  peace  with  their 
neighbours  will  go  to  war  to  die  for  the  same  folks  called 
fellow  countrymen.  Social  progress  is  a  constant  con- 
version of  multitudes  into  societies. 

Sympathy  leads  to  emancipation,  and  emancipation 
creates  new  sympathies.  This  has  been  the  natural 
result  the  world  over,  between  husband  and  wife,  father 
and  child,  master  and  slave,  baron  and  serf,  ruler  and 
citizen.  To  just  the  degree  to  which  there  has  been 
emancipation,  so  that  one  side  has  been  freed  from 
using  force  and  the  other  from  suffering  it,  there  has  been 
a  gain  in  the  sweetness  of  intercourse.  Men  are  different, 
hence  need  each  other,  and  are  always  moving  toward 
contact,  even  if  force  be  needed  to  bring  it  about.  Contact 
tends  to  love,  and  with  love  comes  freedom. 

This  is  not  a  dream.  It  is  the  most  accurate  political 
history  and  political  philosophy.  Social  love,  the  love 
that  alone  can  solve  the  labour  question,  is  not  mere 
good-will.  Love,  the  great  actor  in  humanisation,  has 
not  been  a  mere  ecstasy  nor  a  wash  of  good-will.  The 
love  of  children  has  been  as  practical  as  affectional. 
It  has  been  hard  at  work  in  the  schoolroom  with  Froebel, 
seeking  to  open  every  vent  for  the  discharge  of  child 


28  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

force  and  every  opportunity  for  the  exercise  of  faculty. 
Social  love  uses  social  forms  to  protect  the  child  in  the 
home,  the  school,  the  factory — alas,  that  a  child  should 
be  in  a  factory!  The  French  law  protects  it  from  a 
disinheriting  father.  The  American  law  taxes  all  to 
give  it  education.  The  English  law  taxes  all  to  give  it 
playgrounds.  Social  love  of  woman  does  not  leave  her 
fate  in  the  hands  of  the  personal  affection  of  the  "good" 
father  or  the  "good"  husband.  It  has  changed  the 
daughter  and  wife  from  properties  to  persons.  Social 
love  abolished  the  horrors  of  slavery,  not  by  telling  the 
masters  to  be  loving  owners  but  by  ordering  them  not  to 
be  owners  at  all.  The  law  of  love  is  not  good  owners 
but  free  men,  not  good  kings  but  enfranchised  citizens, 
not  good  employers  but  self-employing  workingmen. 
These  are  the  terms  by  which  social  love  settles  the 
problems  of  slavery,  monarchy  and  monopoly.  Love 
and  Freedom  is  the  law.  There  must  be  good-will;  as 
much  of  the  passion,  emotion,  sentiment  of  love  as 
your  temperament,  the  fashion  of  the  times,  and  the 
precise  point  reached  in  the  cooling  of  the  earth  permits, 
but  there  must  be  good-will  on  both  sides,  and  the 
good-will  must  be  free,  and  it  can  be  free ;  that  is,  it  can 
know  its  laws  and  how  to  follow  them  only  by  being 
organised,  institutionalised.  Love  is  the  fulfilling  of 
the  law. 


CHAPTER  II 

SOCIAL   PROGRESS   ALWAYS    RELIGIOUS 

THE  philosophers  have  their  cosmic  dates  when  the 
great  events  of  evolution  happened.  At  such  a  period, 
by  a  variation  of  intelligence,  man  came.  At  such 
another  period,  by  the  variation  of  conscience — the 
sense  of  duty  to  each  other — the  recognition  of  the 
"reciprocal  necessities  of  behaviour,"  as  Fiske  puts  it, 
began  the  clan,  the  first  company  to  enlist  in  the  march 
of  civilisation.  But  all  the  variations,  from  the  amoeba 
up,  have  been  variations  of  intelligence,  though  we 
cannot  place  the  seat  of  intelligence.  All  the  variations 
have  been  variations  of  conscience,  even  before  those 
of  the  eohippus,  striving  to  live  a  better  life  and  aspiring 
to  become  a  horse.  To  do  and  to  do  better.  This  has 
been  the  law  of  creation,  even  of  matter,  before  it  grew 
what  we  call  life.  "The  inner  perfecting  principle" 
of  Aristotle,  "the  slow  wishing  of  animals"  of  Lamarck, 
Darwin's  "origin  of  species"  through  the  selection  by 
nature  of  variations  for  the  better,  Wallace's  "spiritual 
nature" — whether  we  look  at  the  process  from  the 
outside  with  Empedocles  and  Darwin,  or  from  the  inside 
with  Wallace,  Aristotle  and  Lamarck.  If  we  agree  with  all, 
as  would  be  nearer  the  truth,  we  cannot  put  a  finger  on 
the  point  when  the  variations  viewed  in  the  cosmic  whole 
were  not  of  intelligence  or  conscience,  of  doing  and  doing 
better.  Nor  can  we  tell  at  what  moment  one  stage  of 
the  dawn  of  intelligence  or  conscience  passes  into  the 
rest.  All  life  is  an  ethical  movement.  The  history  of 

29 


30  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  universe  is  written  in  those  words,  to  do  and  to 
do  better,  to  be  and  to  vary,  and  this  cosmic  intelligence 
and  conscience  were  as  real  before  we  were  here  to  report 
as  they  are  now.  They  were  just  as  real  when  they 
were  the  efforts  of  a  nebula  to  revolve  itself  into  suns 
and  planets  as  now,  when  they  are  the  efforts  of  the 
industrial  world,  which  is  the  whole  world,  to  reconstitute 
itself  into  groups  of  lovers.  The  variations  Darwin 
studied  in  flowers  and  worms  were  the  experiments  of 
the  "inventors"  and  "reformers"  of  the  vegetable  and 
zoological  world. 

One  of  the  last  things  the  Church  gives  up  is  its  custo- 
dianship of  the  mystery  of  life.  It  has  had  to  let  go 
law,  and  sanitary  science,  and  architecture  and  arith- 
metic, and  weather  prophecies,  and  much  besides. 

But  it  still  conceives  itself  to  be  special  sanctuary  of 
the  mystery  of  the  universe,  the  guardian  of  what  man 
does  not  know.  One  of  the  most  important  duties  of 
the  priests,  like  other  scientists,  has  been  to  find  im- 
posing names  for  our  ignorances.  If  this  be  so,  then 
the  part  religion  has  to  play  is  a  decreasing  one.  Science 
brings  into  camp  every  day  a  new  fact  captured  by  its 
pickets  scouting  along  the  line  between  the  known  and 
the  unknown.  Once  the  stars  sang  together,  and  went 
before,  and  stood  over  as  part  of  the  escort  of  the  Church ; 
but  now  the  stars  are  weighed,  and  timed,  and  named, 
and  analysed,  and  the  astronomers  are  their  only  priests. 
The  mysteries  are  fading  away,  and  if  they  are  the 
capital  of  religion,  or  the  Church  as  the  habitation  of 
religion,  then  the  Church  must  be  fading  away.  The 
conception  of  religion  which  makes  it  the  experience  of 
the  supernatural  in  the  heart  and  mind  of  the  believer  is 
but  Witch  of  Endorism.  It  was  not  the  Church  which 
revealed  the  mysteries,  though  it  claims  to  be  their 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIOUS  31 

special  interpreter.  The  Inquisition  tries  to  prevent 
Galileo  from  interpreting  to  man  that  part  of  the  mystery 
about  him  which  is  in  the  motions  of  the  earth  and  sun. 
When  there  was  only  one  book — the  Bible — everything 
men  knew  and  all  the  names  they  gave  to  the  things 
they  did  not  know  had  to  be  written  into  it.  Wonderful 
parallelisms  are  being  shown  between  the  order  and 
processes  of  creation  as  chronicled  in  Genesis  and  as 
revealed  by  science.  The  late  science  and  the  early 
science  are  not  as  far  apart  as  we  thought  in  our  first 
pride  of  induction  and  deduction.  The  race  seems  to 
have  kept  a  record  of  its  experience  and  of  creation 
before  it  was  itself  and  before  it  had  any  consciousness, 
and  this  memory,  as  if  of  fossil  marks  on  tissues  where  the 
brain  afterward  was,  the  light  of  consciousness  finds 
waiting  for  it.  Is  it  a  memory  of  the  fire  through  which 
he  and  his  nebulous  world  went  before  there  was  sea,  or 
mud,  or  dust  which  makes  man  picture  the  place  of 
torment  as  a  lake  that  burneth  with  fire  and  brimstone  ? 
Man  knows  himself  to  be  a  progressive  animal;  it  is 
heaven  for  him  to  go  forward ;  hell,  to  go  back.  Fire  was 
his  starting  point;  the  supreme  infelicity  would  be  to 
be  put  back  into  it,  to  begin  the  ascent  again . 

One  of  the  first  of  Man's  writing  lessons  is  to  transcribe 
by  the  light  of  consciousness  out  of  this  mysterious 
library  of  his  pre-human  observations  the  story  of  the 
evolution  of  chaos  into  the  world,  and  of  his  emergence 
out  of  the  mud  of  the  sea.  Man  remembers  how  he 
was  before  he  was.  The  true  interpreter  of  the  mystery 
of  nature  is  science,  not  religion — the  scientist,  not  the 
priest.  But  eternal  alternation  is  the  law  of  nature 
The  same  processes  which  are  taking  away  from  the 
Church  its  former  function  of  "universal  provider,'' 
and  differentiating  or  evolving  religion  into  the  service 


32  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

of  the  better  life,  the  upward  life,  which  seeks  the  incarna- 
tion of  aspiration,  Church  as  educator,  almoner,  justice 
of  peace,  is  bringing  religion  and  the  Church  of  its  wor- 
shippers back  again  to  the  function  of  universal  provider. 
The  new  conception  of  religion — the  service  of  the  upward 
life — the  work  of  Man  as  creator,  redemption  by  the 
redeemed,  makes  it  necessary  to  give  a  religious  value 
and  recognition  as  a  religious  fact  to  every  good  man 
and  every  good  deed.  Every  good  day  is  a  Holy  Day; 
every  good  book  a  Bible ;  every  good  man  a  Creator  and 
Redeemer.  The  stage  of  mental  development  in  which 
we  pride  ourselves  on  discovering  that  the  Church  has 
been  dropping  one  by  one  the  multifarious  functions 
of  her  Mosaic  days,  and  that  what  was  her  work  is 
now  distributed  among  a  thousand  classes  of  artisans 
and  artists  is  but  an  intermediate  stage.  We  next 
find,  as  we  are  finding  now,  that  we  have  specialised 
these  functions  only  to  get  the  benefit  of  the  division  of 
labour;  that  they  are  still  religious  services;  that  their 
higher  scientific,  or  sympathetic,  or  utilitarian  value 
is  in  the  truest  sense  a  higher  ethical  value.  We  come 
in  our  science  to  see  that  the  earliest  memories  of  man 
include  all  his  latest  science.  So  we  see  that  the  latest 
Church  must  stand  in  the  same  place  as  the  first 
Church,  though  on  a  higher  plane,  and  must  include 
all  human  activities.  "  Let  religion  cease  to  be  occasional," 
says  Emerson.  Religion  now  becomes  the  sum  of  all 
human  aspirations ;  worship  the  sum  of  all  human  services ; 
and  all  the  workers  are  the  worshippers.  The  Church 
loses  one  by  one  its  functions,  and  ceases  to  exist  as  a 
separate  institution  with  a  special  set  of  officials  for  the 
special  work  of  incarnating  religion — but  its  place  is 
taken  by  the  universal  communion  of  a  humanity  pressing 
forward  to  the  prize  of  its  high  calling. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIOUS  33 

What  religion  has  to  deal  with  is  not  the  mystery  of 
the  world,  nor  the  supernatural.  Its  subject  is  love,  the 
great  force,  and  its  actions  and  reactions  on  persons  and 
peoples.  Here  the  conflict  between  religion  and  science 
fades  away,  as  so  many  other  creatures  of  mental  night 
have  gone  when  light  came.  Religion  is  one  of  the 
sciences — the  highest  science  of  all. 

Men  group  themselves  along  the  lines  of  many  different 
ideas.  That  one  of  these  ideas  which  is  the  broadest 
and  widest,  uniting  the  largest  number  and  the  most 
different  kinds,  the  king  and  the  cottager,  landlord  and 
serf,  rich  and  poor,  men  and  women,  is  the  religious. 
Religion  is  that  group  of  ideas  which  binds  men  together. 
Religion  is  the  theory  and  practice  of  life.  It  is  the 
greatest  thought  and  fact  of  the  individual  and  society. 
The  "tradition  of  humanity"  is  the  embodiment  of  its 
established  truths;  and  the  divination  of  the  poets,  from 
Moses  to  Tennyson,  are  the  prophecies  of  the  truths 
to  be  established.  The  decalogue  of  its  commandments 
began  to  be  written,  before  there  were  eyes  to  read,  in 
something  broader  than  Mazzini's  tradition  of  Humanity 
—the  universal  experience  of  all  living  things.  We  may 
dismiss  our  ecclesiastical  worries  about  the  decay  of 
religion.  We  need  not  go  to  church  to  get  religion,  nor 
even  go  out  of  doors  to  find  the  universal  religion. 

Man  has  advanced  in  creative  energy,  in  civilisation, 
just  as  he  has  thrown  off  the  incubus  of  an  unalterable 
will  compelling  him  to  its  desire.  The  dread,  inappeasable 
"  Fate  "  of  the  Greek  tragedy,  the  fatalism  of  the  Orientals, 
are  out  of  place  in  the  life  of  modern  man.  They  persist 
in  our  theology,  though  lightened  and  sophisticated  by 
doctrines  like  "Free- Will,"  which  are  the  first  notes  of 
the  declaration  of  independence  of  the  soul  of  man. 
Our  current  theology  is  the  fatalism  of  the  Orient  and  the 


34  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

Fate  of  the  Greek  tragedy  in  modern  dress.  Protestant- 
ism releasing  mankind  from  the  absolutism  of  the  vice- 
gerents of  God  was  the  beginning  of  the  release  of  men 
from  the  absolutism  of  God.  Protestantism,  or  freedom 
of  conscience,  was  the  theological  term;  the  republic, 
or  self-government,  the  political  term;  and  wealth,  or 
freedom  of  exchange,  the  economical  term  and  evolution ; 
or  self -variation  the  scientific  term  in  which  the  great 
movement  we  call  modern  times  has  expressed  itself. 
These  times,  with  their  glorious  discoveries,  immigrations, 
inventions,  revolutions,  were  a  great  eruption  of  the 
energy  which  European  mankind  had  been  accumulating 
during  the  thousand  years  of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  the 
boy  who  is  to  rule  the  city  gathers  his  growth  during  his 
quiet  years  of  country  childhood.  Such  another  ex- 
plosion of  energy  came  before  in  the  wonderful  days 
of  Greece  and  Rome.  Such  another  period  is  to  come 
again,  though  possibly  only  after  another  long  period 
of  rest.  When  it  does  come  the  partial  emancipation 
of  the  will  of  man  which  has  been  made  by  the  com- 
promise in  our  theology  between  God  and  predestination, 
and  man,  or  Free-Will,  will  be  completed  by  the  abolit- 
ion of  the  mental  distance  now  separating  God  and 
man.  All  the  marvels,  splendours,  conveniences  and 
tendernesses  we  call  Progress  are  but  a  faint  prophecy 
of  the  beauty  and  riches  and  -love  with  which  society 
will  burst  into  bloom  when  its  creator,  man,  begins  to 
live  his  new-found  faith. 

All  life  is  incarnation  and  there  is  no  dead  matter. 
But  The  Incarnation — that  has  not  yet  been;  it  is  only 
becoming.  It  is  not  given  to  one  prophet  or  redeemer 
to  be  The  Incarnation  of  the  Divine.  All  humanity. is 
not  yet  large  enough  to  be  all  of  that  incarnation.  The 
intuition  of  truth  by  which  the  Greeks  saw  a  god  in  every 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIOUS  35 

tree,  waterfall  and  mountain  is  the  intuition  by  which, 
we  are  coming  to  see  God  in  everything  that  lives — and 
all  things  live.  Our  mind  is  swinging  back,  not  to 
where  the  Greek  mind  was  but  to  a  corresponding  point 
higher  up. 

Mankind  has  always  recognised  the  divine  in  itself. 
One  of  the  first  forms  was  the  worship  of  ancestors. 
Another  has  been  the  making  of  men  into  gods.  The 
divinity  of  man  is  not  a  new  doctrine.  It  is  not  a  blas- 
phemous doctrine.  The  identity  of  God  and  man  is  as 
clearly  insisted  upon  in  the  Hebrew  Bible  as  in  the  fables 
of  incarnation  of  God  in  man  in  all  ages  and  all  religions, 
down  to  the  scheme  of  Comte.  Whatever  view  we 
may  take  of  this,  however  secular,  however  sacred,  it 
bears  easily  the  interpretation  that  Godhood  is  one  of  the 
stages  of  Manhood.  Man,  John's  words  clearly  say,  is  a 
possible  God.  If  he  loves  he  becomes  God,  for  he  is 
born  of  God.  Jesus  declares  the  same  truth;  the  man 
who  does  the  works  of  the  Father  becomes  one  with  the 
Father.  In  these  words  of  Holy  Writ  we  see  expressed 
a  doctrine  of  the  divinity  of  man  in  tune  with  the  passion- 
ate aspirations  which  are  now  breaking  out  from  the 
lips  of  modern  men. 

All  the  men  who  have  gone  before,  even  the  bad  ones, 
have  travailed  to  prepare  our  way  and  get  ready  the 
inheritances  into  which  we  have  been  born.  From 
their  labours  comes  the  message:  A  new  commandment 
give  we  unto  you,  that  ye  love  one  another,  even  as  we 
have  loved  you.  It  is  time  for  the  people,  knowing 
themselves,  and  catching  the  sequences  of  human  benef- 
icence which  make  history  a  drama  of  good  will,  to 
declare  to  each  other:  Eternal  love  is  the  love  we  are 
living — here  and  now. 

The  spectacle  of  a  new  religion  in  the  making  we  can 


3  6  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

see  to-day.  In  the  co-operative  literature,  in  the  speeches 
of  strike  leaders  and  new  party  men,  the  lectures  of 
scholars,  the  sermons  of  the  clergy  on  the  mount,  in  the 
Church  and  outside,  in  the  trades-union  and  socialistic 
press,  in  the  magazines,  in  the  conversation  of  all  sorts 
of  men,  in  the  successful  books  of  the  year,  and  in  the 
action,  social  and  personal,  which  is  embodying  this 
thought,  a  new  theory  and  practice  of  life  are  being  worked 
out  before  our  eyes.  Anyone  in  a  few  hours  can  gather 
out  of  current  discussion  and  movements  of  reform 
hundreds  of  illustrations  of  each  count  in  this  enumera- 
tion. We  live  at  the  conflux  of  two  eternities,  Carlyle 
says.  This  is  as  true  of  the  thought  of  life  as  of  life 
itself,  and  mankind  has  always  been  remaking  its  theory 
and  practice  of  life,  which  is  its  religion.  But  ours  is 
perhaps  the  first  age  which  had  the  self -consciousness  to 
see  itself  doing  this,  and  our  time  by  all  its  signs  manifestly 
approaches  one  of  the  great  crises  which  have  marked 
off  history  into  eras.  In  the  sense  in  which  Christianity, 
though  only  a  variation  in  an  unceasing  evolution,  was 
a  new  religion,  may  that  also  be  said  to  be  a  new  religion 
on  which  man  is  now  brooding.  The  new  era  is  ushering 
itself  in  by  a  new  religion,  and  that  religion  is  not  merely 
the  Christian  religion  but  an  expansion  of  it.  The  use 
of  the  Christian  religion  as  the  standard  of  the  new 
movement  is  not  leadership  but  reaction,  religious 
reaction,  and  a  tactical  mistake.  It  infallibly  breeds 
controversies,  heresy  hunts,  trouble.  There  will  be 
only  one  form  of  worship  in  the  new  religion — work. 
But  one  form  of  prayer — aspirations.  There  will  not 
be  one  dividing  line — neither  of  creed,  nationality, 
property  nor  anything  else.  Man  is  solely  being  revealed 
to  himself.  The  word  the  world  waits  for  to-day  will 
come  from  those  who  can  disclose  to  Humanity  that  the 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIOUS  37 

perfections  it  has  been  attributing  to  its  gods  are  sparks 
struck  out  of  the  goodnesses  it  feels  stirring  within  itself. 
Mankind  struggling  up  out  of  the  mud  has  not  dared  to 
think  of  itself  as  the  nebulas  in  which  were  contained 
shining  star  stuff.  But  it  is  coming  to  feel  that  it  does 
not  need  to  be  divine  by  proxy  any  longer. 

When  the  agitation  among  the  peoples  takes  a  religious 
colour,  we  may  know  that  they  are  stirred  to  their 
deepest,  that  the  universal  instincts  are  aroused,  that 
that  which  is  irresistible  has  begun  to  walk  abroad. 
Such  is  the  stir  to-day  in  the  multitude.  Even  those 
who  had  no  conception  of  any  social  significance  in  it, 
and  have  viewed  the  subject  from  the  standpoint  of 
theological  evolution  merely,  have  long  been  pointing 
out  to  us  the  signs  of  a  new  religious  synthesis.  There 
has  always  been  religious  excitement  in  connection  with 
great  popular  movements — the  Hussites,  the  Lollards, 
the  Puritans — it  is  not  necessary  to  multiply  instances. 
But  we  will  have  to  go  back  to  the  beginning  of  our 
era  for  anything  to  match  the  force  of  the  deep-sea  swell 
with  which  the  surfaces  of  faith,  tranquil  for  centuries, 
are  now  beginning  to  heave.  It  is  nineteen  hundred 
years  since,  for  our  province  of  the  race,  the  conception  of 
One  Humanity  and  One  God  expressed  itself  in  the  idea 
of  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Son  of  Man.  That  now  is 
assimilated,  fertilised,  in  the  missions,  emancipations 
and  democracies  of  nineteen  centuries,  and  interwoven 
forever  in  the  tissues  of  race  consciousness.  Another 
thought  stirs  in  the  universal  mind.  The  Son  of  Man, 
Father  in  Heaven,  Son  of  God,  God,  Heaven,  Mediator, 
the  Holy  Spirit — all  these  are  symbols  by  which  men 
have  been  picturing  themselves  to  themselves.  Their 
hinder  parts  not  yet  pawed  free,  they  have  hardly  known 
themselves,  they  have  seen  themselves  only  darkly, 


38  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

they  have  hardly  dared  believe  in  themselves  as  far  as 
they  have  known  and  seen.  But  now  they  begin  to 
dare  to  believe.  The  words  and  deeds  attributed  to  the 
gods  are  in  truth  the  words  and  deeds  of  humanity. 
They  are  the  words  and  deeds  in  which  men  not  yet 
realising  themselves  have  tremblingly  expressed  ideals 
they  thought  too  great  to  have  been  their  own  creation. 
Men  have  been  worshipping  themselves,  and  they  are 
beginning  to  see  that  the  time  has  come  for  humanity 
to  declare  itself  and  express  its  hopes  and  fears  in  terms 
of  humanity.  God  is  the  name  man  gives  his  own 
future.  What  men  worship  that  they  are  growing  toward. 
Men  have  always  been  ruled  by  elective  gods.  It  does 
not  derogate  from  the  invisible  to  emphasise  the  visible, 
that  religion  has  always  been  a  revelation  to  man  from 
man. 

The  mystery  of  the  world,  its  source,  its  destiny,  no 
man  with  a  sense  of  humour  would  pretend  to  know. 
But  a  man  can  see  what  is  in  the  mind  of  men  on 
these  things,  and  report  and  criticise.  The  "sacred" 
words  are  all  of  man's  make,  and  are  subject  to  man's 
cross-examination.  The  men  who  discuss  them  are 
not  making  claims  to  omniscience.  Men  are  at  last 
becoming  conscious  that  in  their  mythologies  they  have 
been  writing  their  autobiographies.  The  "revelations" 
are  self -revelations.  It  is  the  infinite  love — to  be — of 
man  that  is  imaged  by  the  words  the  Infinite  Love  of 
God.-  The  religious  idea  advances  from  the  Fatherhood 
of  God  to  the  Fatherhood  of  Man.  Not  what  man  does 
exalts  him,  Browning  tells  us,  but  what  man  would  do. 
The  divinity  of  man  struggles  to  express  itself — of 
man  making  new  compositions  of  force  and  matter; 
changing  the  face  of  nature  and  society  and  himself — 
of  Man  a  Creator. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIOUS  39 

The  mystics  think  that  man,  supplementing  himself 
with  locomotives,  telescopes,  microscopes  and  telephones, 
and  seeking  to  fly,  is  prefiguring  what  he  will  be.  Man 
improvises  himself.  As  he  does  so,  he  knows  that  he  is 
to  be  something  above  and  beyond  the  best  that  now 
appears,  and  that  man  is  merely  one  of  his  own  by- 
products. This  is  the  revelation  which  is  now  coming 
to  humanity  out  of  itself.  One  meets  its  private  avowals 
everywhere,  most  frankly  expressed,  in  that  free  talk 
of  free  men  and  women  in  which  human  powers  play 
at  their  best  and  human  intercourse  reaches  its  highest — 
the  outflowing  conversation,  unofficial  and  unabashed, 
of  congenial  people  seeking  the  truth  in  each  other  and 
in  the  world  about  them  of  the  partnership  of  man 
in  the  creative  power. 

Human  brotherhood,  like  the  fatherhood  of  Humanity, 
is  something  to  be  achieved.  It  is  an  order  of  numberless 
degrees  into  which  the  people  enter,  degree  by  degree, 
according  as  they  acknowledge  their  "mutual  responsi- 
bility" and  pool  all  they  have  and  all  they  can  do  into 
the  "indissoluble  copartnering  "  of  a  true  society.  God- 
hood  also  is  still  an  unfulfilled  hope.  Our  exhorters,  in 
preaching  to  men  that  they  are  brothers,  are  telling 
them  not  what  they  are  but  what  they  are  to  be.  "  Life 
is  sacred"  means  that  life  is  growing  sacred.  Out  of  the 
pulsing,  spending  streams  of  human  energy,  rioting  in 
the  waste  of  overloaded  tendencies,  pouring  forth  men 
and  women  by  uncounted  millions — like  the  spawn  of 
the  codfish — to  secure  the  perpetuation  of  one  ideal 
after  another,  rises  a  progressive  incarnation  of  life 
moving  on  to  ever  better  uses.  All  life  is  not  sacred. 
Only  sacred  life  is  sacred.  No  life  is  ever  more  sacred 
than  when  it  goes  to  make  a  mouthful  for  some  higher 
life.  The  "people"  means  that  all  who  are  on  earth 


40  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL   CREATOR 

should  share  their  efforts  and  the  fruits.  The  "natural" 
man  Rousseau  and  other  philosophers  thought  to  be 
the  perfect  man,  to  whose  sanity  and  goodness  every 
question  could  be  trusted.  From  the  "state  of  nature" 
and  "the  natural  man"  society  and  humanity,  they 
thought,  had  descended  by  a  fatal  evolution  to  its  present 
slavery  and  degradation.  Their  "state  of  nature"  and 
"natural  man"  are  ideals.  Their  place  is  before  us, 
not  in  the  past.  Of  all  the  prophetic  and  poetic  anticipa- 
tions of  its  future  which  the  thought  of  man  has  recorded 
in  the  forms  of  words  and  the  names  of  things,  none  is 
finer  than  that  which  gives  to  what  is  the  appellation  of 
"nature,"  which  means  "that  which  is  to  be." 

Freedom  of  belief  gets  a  new  sanction  when  we  see 
how  the  guesses  of  the  philosophers,  Greek  and  mediaeval, 
have  been  the  heralds  of  the  great  discoveries  of  science. 
Our  sense  of  humour  alone  ought  to  be  enough  to  forbid 
us  to  question  the  fullest  liberty  of  everyone  to  believe 
where  no  one  can  know.  But  Freedom  of  Belief  has  a 
utilitarian  basis.  The  history  of  science  makes  nothing 
so  clear  as  that  the  human  mind  has  a  faculty  by  which 
it  foresees  what  it  is  to  see.  Protoplasm,  natural  selec- 
tion, adaptation  of  environment  and  all  the  other  leading 
ideas  of  evolution  are  to  be  found  in  Aristotle  and  Em- 
pedocles.  Aristotle  gets  a  glimpse  of  the  time  when  the 
shuttle  shall  weave  itself.  The  Mosaic  account  of  creation 
anticipates  the  discovery  of  geology  and  astronomy. 
For  every  political  institution  on  which  modern  freedom 
prides  itself  some  anticipatory  flash  of  intuitive  genius 
has  been  put  on  record  by  poet  or  prophet.  Such  minds 
are  our  fortune  tellers,  and  freedom  of  belief  gives  us 
their  confidences.  Natural  selection  plays  its  part 
among  the  guesses  as  among  those  other  adventures  of 
-life,  putting  itself  forth  into  forms  with  which  the  natural 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIOUS  41 

ists  deal.  Some  guesses  are  the  fittest  and  survive. 
Our  progress  for  thousands  of  years  in  the  future  is 
already  anticipated  in  our  poems  and  prophecies,  some 
of  the  greatest  of  them  no  doubt  not  yet  recognised. 

"The  power  of  love  as  the  basis  of  a  State  has  never 
been  tried,"  Emerson  says,  writing  under  the  influence 
of  the  amiable  voluntarism  that  rilled  so  large  a  part  of  the 
speculation  of  his  days  and  would  not  let  the  beasts  be 
beasts  of  burden.  But  there  is  a  point  of  view  from 
which  it  is  evident  that  the  fundamental  basis  of  the 
state  always  has  been  love,  that  natural  social  force 
which  makes  for  association.  This  analysis  cannot  be 
disturbed  by  making  a  distinction  between  the  society 
and  the  State.  The  State  is  one  of  the  organs  of  the 
society,  and  has  its  foundations  in  the  same  forces  of 
human  nature. 

Heaven  is  one  of  the  Utopias — one  of  the  most  popular 
of  all  the  Utopias.  It  has  been  created  by  those  who 
do  not  dare  to  express  their  real  thoughts  for  the  illumina- 
tion of  those  who  would  not  dare  consider  them.  The 
reform  which  makes  our  wrongs  here  right  in  Heaven 
is  the  recourse  of  slaves  afraid  to  do  their  duty  on  earth. 
Progress  on  earth,  not  perfection  in  Heaven,  is  the  word 
of  the  future.  Man  is  the  god  of  society.  He  is  its 
creator.  Looking  forward,  he  can  see  opening  up  the 
vista  of  an  infinity  of  creative  acts,  combining  the  forces 
of  man  and  nature  in  ways  beyond  number  and  beyond 
present  foresight.  Purposes  of  beneficent  activity  multi- 
ply by  geometrical  progression.  Humanity  sees  its 
goal  to  be  not  perfection  but  progress ;  the  invitation  of 
every  to-morrow  always  worth  accepting,  because  of 
the  never-broken  promise  of  the  past  to-morrow.  Man 
is  not  under  the  law,  he  creates  the  law.  True  law  and 
order  means  loyalty  to  the  spirit  of  the  law  more  than  to 


42  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  letter  of  the  laws.  The  creator  will  never  stop 
creating — and  man  is  the  creator.  A  mankind  able  to 
emerge  out  of  the  political  economy  of  massacres  and 
slavery,  out  of  the  politics  of  the  despot  and  the  oligarchy, 
out  of  the  religion  of  the  idol  and  the  gods  of  hate,  need 
not  doubt  its  ability  to  rise  higher.  It  knows  it  shares 
the  divine  power  to  create  environed  and  environment. 
The  creature  is  the  creator — every  creature.  Man  is  not 
the  creator,  nor  the  creator  of  aH,  but  he  is  the  greatest 
creator  we  know  on  earth.  He  is  the  creator  of  himself 
and  of  society.  Life,  our  life  and  all  other,  is  a  constant 
pilgrimage  toward  the  goal  of  desire.  "  Man  wills,  accord- 
ing as  he  believes  and  loves,"  says  Lamennais.  There 
is  that  in  nature,  not  man  alone,  which  can,  first,  foresee 
and,  second,  make  its  own  vision  come  true.  We  are 
to  pray  to  ourselves  and  each  other.  Such  prayers  can 
be  answered.  The  people  has  to  create  itself,  as  man 
has  to  create  himself,  and  nowhere  yet  is  there  a  people 
or  a  man.  The  whole  past  life  of  humanity,  with  all  its 
faults,  has  been  a  religious  service  in  a  cathedral  vaulted 
by  all  the  constellations.  God's  eyes  are  men's  eyes; 
his  arms  men's  arms;  his  mind  men's  minds;  his  heart 
men's  hearts.  We  are  the  vicegerents,  the  mediators, 
the  sons  of  God  made  manifest.  The  work  of  creation  is 
our  work.  The  joy  of  the  poet,  the  delight  of  the  inventor, 
the  triumph  of  the  patriot,  the  calm  gladness  of  duty 
done,  the  perpetual  holiday  of  the  genius  in  action  and 
of  the  doer  of  good — these  are  "  God  saw  everything  that 
He  had  made,  and  behold  it  was  good." 

The  religion  of  the  future  is  to  be  the  religion  of  the 
past,  but  continued,  expanded.  We  are  not  to  have 
a  new  revelation,  but  more  of  the  old  flows  forth  every 
day.  Our  farthest  seer  can  see  no  truths  more  divine 
than  those  which  have  been  already  declared  to  us. 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIONS  43 

The  fundamental  principles  of  law,  government,  political 
economy,  morals,  already  seen  by  Moses,  Justinian, 
Jesus,  Adam  Smith,  will  never  be  overthrown  nor 
displaced,  but,  like  the  twinkling  stars  reported  by 
observers  from  age  to  age,  they  will  be  seen  more  clearly. 
Our  doers  will  never  do  anything  better  in  kind  than  the 
patriotisms,  loves,  martyrdoms,  of  the  heroes  of  the  past, 
but  they  will  do  the  same  kind  of  things  with  the  wider 
scope  and  the  nicer  measure  our  times  need.  The  eye 
of  primitive  man  saw  a  sky  full  of  stars;  the  eye  of 
Herschel  or  Mitchell  could  see  no  more  than  a  sky  full 
of  stars,  though  it  could  see  more  stars. 

The  "Redemption  of  the  World"  did  not  begin  at  the 
beginning  of  our  era.  It  began  with  the  beginning  of  the 
very  first  of  the  eras,  and  has  never  paused.  This 
Redemption  is  a  drama  whose  scenes  include  every 
step  of  evolution,  every  act  of  emancipation,  every 
discovery  of  science  and  every  deed  of  good-will  since 
time  was.  Redemption  was  already  old  when  amphibian 
man  struggled  out  of  the  mud  and  began  creating  for 
himself  better  respiration  than  his  fish  gills.  Redemption 
is  still  young  now  that  our  society  feels  leaping  in  its 
womb  for  joy  the  new  man  coming  to  add  a  new  peace,  a 
new  good-will,  to  the  long  list  of  those  which  his  elder 
brothers  of  history  have  established  before  him.  Adam 
was  one  of  the  redeemers  when  he  led  mankind  out  of 
savage  precariousness  of  dependence  on  the  wild  food 
of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  going  forth  "to  till  the  ground 
from  whence  he  was  taken."  Noah  was  a  redeemer 
when  he  taught  men  how  to  build  boats,  and  Abraham 
when  he  led  his  people  to  abandon  human  sacrifices,  and 
Moses  when  he  introduced  written  law,  and  perhaps  wrote 
it.  Perseus,  Theseus,  Hercules,  traversing  Greece  to 
slay  monsters,  the  enemies  of  God  and  man,  releasing 


44  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

maidens  from  Minotaurs,  freeing  cities  and  peoples 
and  draining  swamps,  were  redeemers ;  and  Howard  in  the 
prisons,  Darwin  in  the  fields,  Washington  in  the  camp, 
Stein  among  the  serfs,  Garrison  among  the  slaves,  Shaftes- 
bury  among  the  workingmen,  Franklin  in  the  thunder- 
storm, Wendell  Phillips  running  for  Governor  of  Massa- 
chusetts on  the  Labour  Ticket,  all  are  of  the  same  noble 
line.  All  the  creative  minds  are  reforming  minds. 

Redemption  and  creation  are  the  same  thing.  Re- 
demption and  progress  are  the  same  thing.  There  are 
new  names  but  few  new  things.  What  the  Church 
calls  the  Fall  of  Man  is  Degeneration  in  the  vocabulary 
of  Evolution.  Science  says  Adaptation,  Variation  where 
the  Church  says  Born  Again,  and  the  Elect  of  Calvin 
are  Darwin's  Fittest  to  Survive.  The  greatest  evolution 
that  is  in  progress  is  the  evolution  of  mind.  The  most 
thrilling  scene  in  the  drama  of  creation  is  the  transforma- 
tion of  matter  into  life  and  life  into  God.  Pushing  upward 
and  outward  through  all  the  forms  of  nature  is  life, 
urging  on  all  the  variations  of  matter  from  the  mollusc 
to  man  in  perpetual  aspiration  to  express  itself  better  and 
better.  The  impulse-shaping  matter  from  within  is 
itself  limited,  imprisoned  by  matter  from  without. 
It  reaches  intelligence.  It  passes  on  to  conscious  will. 
It  steps  up  to  conscience.  It  begins  to  unite  with  other 
minds.  It  forms  the  public  mind,  the  public  conscience. 
It  looks  toward  the  stars  and  plans  signals  for  Mars. 
The  Central  mind  which  will  direct  all  the  universe,  as 
the  mind  of  man  directs  his  body,  is  now  being  formed. 
God  is  growing.  This  universal  consciousness  we  call 
God,  which  sees  all,  feels  all,  knows  all,  does  all,  is  now 
in  process  of  development.  It  is  becoming ;  not  yet  is — 
we  have  not  carried  evolution  far  enough.  In  its 
first  reaction  against  an  impossible  God  and  against 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGIONS  45 

the  absurdity  of  explaining  the  imperfect  and  imcomplete 
creature  and  creation  by  a  perfect  and  complete  God, 
evolution  would  have  been  glad  to  abolish  God  altogether. 
But  evolutionary  thought  now  sees  that  God  must  be 
included  in  its  scheme,  but  as  a  God  that  is  evolving. 
Man  is  now  making  God.  God  is  the  sum  total  of  our 
ideals.  There  is  no  King  God  in  a  true  democratic  Heaven. 
Every  one  of  us  citizens  has  his  chance  and  his  right  to 
play  God.  A  people  who  are  monarchists  in  their  prayers 
at  church  and  democrats  at  the  polls  are  riding  two 
horses  going  in  opposite  directions  with  the  speed  of 
runaway  comets. 

"What  shall  we  do  to  be  saved?"  is  the  cry  of  our 
times,  frightened  by  its  Labour  movements.  To  be 
saved,  save!  Save  and  you  will  be  saved.  Do  every- 
thing. Every  good  deed,  every  good  thought,  is  an  act 
of  redemption.  None  of  the  many  harmonies  already 
existing — of  the  family,  the  State,  the  Church — are 
complete,  and  each  grows  rounder  and  fuller  and  sweeter 
as  a  new  harmony  is  added  to  the  series,  floating  with  its 
new  tide  the  boats  left  stranded  by  the  tide  before. 
All  family  life  in  America,  and  in  truth  beyond  America, 
grew  richer  both  economically  and  affectionately  when 
family  life  was  made  possible  by  emancipation  to  the 
Negroes  of  the  South.  They  who  are  to  save  and  to  be 
saved  are  all  men;  all  faculties  are  to  be  given  their 
field  that  they  may  give  their  fruit. 

It  is  no  derogation  from  the  Fatherhood  beyond,  and 
above,  that  man  recognises  here  the  Fatherhood  of 
Humanity  over  its  sons,  the  children  of  men.  In  the 
democratic  Kingdom  of  Heaven  the  children  and  the 
father  are  one,  in  the  same  order  of  succession  as  in  real 
life.  The  fathers  were  once  children,  and  the  children  in 
their  turn  become  fathers. 


46  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

There  has  been  known  to  us  no  holiness,  no  omnipotence, 
no  omniscience,  no  love  so  divine  that  man  has  not 
been  found  fit  to  be  its  spokesman,  mediator  and  executor. 
He  is  made  in  the  image  of  the  highest  means  that  he  is 
making  himself  in  the  image  of  his  highest  aspiration. 
Age  by  age  he  approximates  to  the  ideal,  and  the  ideal 
moves  on.  Perfection,  never;  perfectibility,  always! 
To  be  perfect  is  to  stop ;  only  perfectibility  makes  eternity 
possible  and  worth  living.  There  is  no  perfection,  but 
the  conception  of  perfection.  Nature  with  no  perfect 
individuals  produces  perfect  effects.  This  she  does  by 
her  prodigality.  In  her  flower-spread  meadows,  her 
forests,  her  seas,  her  starry  heavens,  her  multitudes,  no 
one  is  right  on  all  its  sides,  but  every  defect  in  a  part  is 
balanced  by  myriads  of  better  parts  in  others.  What 
one  lacks  thousands  of  others  supply.  A  conception  of 
perfect  humanity  or  of  a  perfect  flower  is  got  from  a 
cloud  of  witnesses  not  one  of  whom  is  perfect.  Life 
is  joy,  and  has  always  and  everywhere  been  joy.  The 
groans  of  men  have  been  only  aspirations  for  a  higher 
joy  than  that  present  to  them.  The  fish-man  of  Anaxi- 
mander  and  Darwin  and  Cope,  having  somehow  got  a 
first  touch  of  the  comfort  of  sunshine,  did  not  stop 
winning  his  way  until  he  made  the  sunshine  instead 
of  the  sea  his  home.  Our  moments  of  patriotism,  brother- 
liness,  good-will,  are  leaps  up  into  the  happiness  which 
flows  all  through  social  space,  and  in  it  some  day  we  shall 
live,  and  work,  and  bask,  and  ripen. 

Life,  looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  individual, 
is  an  insoluble  mystery  with  its  heart-breaks  and  its 
back-breaks.  Before  the  advent  of  modern  science  with 
its  vast  fund  for  generalities  and  new  views,  its  statistics, 
evolutionary  demonstrations,  etc.,  mankind  was  com- 
pelled to  find  hope  and  courage  in  the  idea  of  a  future 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGION  47 

life.  There  was  no  other  source  of  hope.  But  life, 
looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  whole  human 
race,  and  in  the  long  periods  we  can  now  command  with 
all  the  accumulations  of  social  science,  becomes  an 
ordered  movement,  a  creative  purpose.  This  will  give 
hope.  This  will  help  us  understand  the  mystery  and 
arm  the  people  to  create  themselves.  The  successful 
man  in  America  has  a  hard  and  almost  incredible  lesson 
to  learn — that  in  running  about  the  continent  and  dis- 
covering, developing  and  appropriating  all  the  good 
things,  he  was  acting  only  as  an  agent  of  society  and  the 
social  plan. 

In  the  struggle  for  existence  the  Hebrew  ideas  of  the 
fatherhood  of  God,  and  brotherhood  of  Hebrews,  expanded 
by  Jesus  to  brotherhood  of  all  men,  survived  as  fittest 
of  all  ancient  syntheses.  That  restatement  of  the  same 
old  principles  which  can  bring  men  as  fellow  labourers 
under  the  same  law,  and  that  can  associate  them  as  fellow 
worshippers,  will  be  the  religion  of  the  coming  era. 
The  one  must  precede  the  other,  men  must  learn  that  all 
are  fellow  beings,  before  they  can  advance  to  the  con- 
ception that  all  fellow  beings  must  be  brothers  on  earth 
as  well  as  in  Heaven,  brothers  in  all  things  as  well  as  in 
one  thing,  brothers  in  the  rewards  of  labour  as  well  as  in 
the  labour.  The  religion  of  the  immediate  future  is  to  be 
an  Industrial  Religion — one  which  will  expand  to  the 
association  of  men  in  their  common  toils,  the  sacred  law 
of  brotherhood  which  they  now  obey  only  in  the  Church, 
and  there  brokenly,  because,  being  infidel  to  it  outside 
the  Church,  they  are  unfit  and  unable  to  live  up  to  its 
fulness  within  the  Church. 

Fallen  man  naturally  has  a  perfect  God,  but  that 
vision  disappears  with  the  disappearance  of  the  vision 
of  the  perfect  man.  A  progressive  man  can  worship  only 


48  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

a  progressive  God  and  institutionalise  his  worship  in  a 
constantly  progressive  religion.  As  the  family,  the 
republic,  are  what  we  make  them,  so  God  and  the  govern- 
ment of  the  whole  world  will  be  the  sum  of  what  is  done 
by  each  person,  each  force,  each  will,  in  its  place.  We 
are  each  God  to  the  extent  of  our  ability  and  within  our 
opportunity.  We  must  work  while  there  is  light  and 
strength  to  realise  God.  What  God  will  be  depends  on 
each  of  us.  This  view  makes  democracy  more  sacred 
than  ever.  When  men  realise  that  they  are  all  responsible 
for  what  God  as  well  as  the  State  is  to  be,  they  will  look 
as  never  before  to  see  that  each  has  the  chance  to  do  his 
best,  and  does  it;  and  they  will  comprehend  as  never 
before  the  virtue  of  a  common  ideal  for  the  inspiration 
of  all,  and  will  appreciate  that  the  Bible  is  proved  by  the 
experience  of  mankind. 

The  whole  social  scheme  is  hindered,  and  men,  its 
creators  and  promotors  of  progress,  handicapped,  because 
we  have  converted  our  aspirations  for  perfection  into  the 
superstition  that  perfection  has  been  attained  in  God. 
God  is  simply  the  name  of  an  ideal  carried  to  its  infinite 
terms.  It  is  the  ideal  realised — the  impossible  done. 
Perfection  is  simply  a  name  for  the  end  of  progress,  that 
is  of  life  and  of  happiness.  Happiness  and  life  are  move- 
ment, achievement,  progress  The  striving,  the  labour. 
Is  progressive  in  itself.  It  is  the  discharge  of  outlet- 
seeking  force,  the  realisation  of  function.  To  make 
possible  these  relations  is  a  new  hope.  This  is  a  new 
religion,  because  men  find  that  they  ate  not  bound 
together  as  they  had  been  told  they  were.  They  have 
discovered  that  the  common  tie  is  not  that  of  helpless 
victims  of  the  caprices  of  the  Greek  gods  nor  of  the 
blind  fate  of  the  gods  of  the  Orientals.  They  are  coming 
to  see  that  the  tie  is  that  of  co-workers.  Men  at  last 


SOCIAL  PROGRESS— RELIGION  49 

are  waking  up  to  know  themselves  as  creators — they  are 
co-creators.  It  is  consciousness  that  lifts  to  the  level 
of  religious  thought;  and  it  is  this  new  consciousness 
which  is  lifting  men  up  to  this  new  religious  height. 
In  its  essential  qualities  there  is  nothing  more  super- 
natural in  the  glow  and  uplift  and  insight  of  what  we  call 
religious  experiences  than  there  is  supernatural  in  that 
almost  suffocating  suffusion  of  emotion  in  the  breast 
with  which  we  look  upon  the  flag  of  our  country  in  a 
foreign  land,  or  which  hurries  the  noble-hearted  youth 
of  a  nation  with  joyful  smiles  to  their  death  on  the  battle- 
fields of  patriotism.  The  religious  emotion,  as  having 
in  its  horizon  all  life,  and  as  having  its  roots  in  the  deepest 
memories  and  hopes  our  natures  are  capable  of,  may 
be  intenser,  more  intimate  than  the  patriotic  or  any 
other  emotion,  but  that  therefore  it  is  supernatural — No. 
We  have  called  it  supernatural  only  because  so  great 
a  thing  needed  the  greatest  word  we  had.  But  it  is, 
instead  of  supernatural,  really  the  most  natural. 


CHAPTER  III 

MERE   CONTACT   MAKING   FOR   SPIRITUAL   UNION 

MODERN  growth  has  thrown  men  together  in  a  multitude 
which  overpasses  national  or  even  continental  lines 
In  the  money  world  men  are  in  contact  but  not  in  associa- 
tion. We  have  commerce,  travel,  but  we  have  not 
society.  This  chaos  exists  in  the  separate  provinces 
and  in  the  whole  area  of  the  Labour  world.  Here  our 
times  have  their  special  task  indicated  to  them.  These 
people,  touching  but  not  uniting,  must  unite  and  cease  to 
touch.  Men  in  juxtaposition  must  associate.  A  multi- 
tude must  always  become  a  society,  a  collection  of  friends, 
or — separate,  in  anarchy  or  despotism — decay.  There 
must  be  a  union  of  the  people  coextensive  with  their 
contact  in  modern  affairs,  and  on  a  basis  as  broad  as 
humanity.  Just  as  inexorably,  where  men  come  together 
in  industrial  multitudes  must  there  be  as  in  men 's  politi- 
cal multitudes,  in  Mazzini's  words,  "a  mutual  human 
responsibility,"  "a  community  of  belief,"  "a  retempering 
of  the  individual  life  through  communion  with  the  uni- 
versal life." 

Arthur  Young,  making  his  famous  tour  of  France  on 
the  eve  of  the  French  Revolution,  visited  Alsace-Lorraine, 
which  had  been  torn  by  Louis  XIV.  from  its  Father- 
land, Germany.  In  his  classic  "Travels  in  France," 
still  being  put  to  press  in  its  second  century,  and  known 
to  every  schoolboy  in  the  French  Republic  by  the  passages 
concerning  the  Old  Regime  which  the  New  Regime 
takes  pains  to  reprint  in  the  textbooks  of  the  public 

so 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION          51 

schools,  Young  reports  upon  the  people  who  for  one 
hundred  years  had  been  under  the  French  flag.  It  was 
"  totally  distinct  and  different  from  that  of  France,  with 
manners,  language,  ideas,  prejudices  and  habits  all 
different."  Young  had  read  of  the  outrage  in  the 
histories  of  Louis  XIV.,  he  had  traced  out  the  boundaries 
of  the  stolen  Province  on  the  map.  But  "so  much 
more  powerful,"  he  says,  "are  things  than  words"  that 
not  until  he  sees  how  great  was  the  range  of  mountains 
Louis  had  to  cross  to  get  at  his  prey,  and  beholds  how 
German  the  people  were  in  everything,  does  he  realise 
the  "injustice  and  ambition"  of  what  the  Grand  Monarch 
had  done.  In  another  hundred  years  another  traveller, 
Miss  M.  Betham  Edwards,  visits  Alsace-Lorraine,  but 
lately  snatched  back  from  France  by  Germany.  The 
people  Young  had  found  German  in  heart  and  habit  she 
now  finds  all  French.  She  sees  the  "sorrowful,  indeed 
agonised,  clinging  of  born  Alsatians  to  the  mother- 
country,"  France;  "once  witnessed,  it  can  never  be 
forgotten."  Rich  and  poor  declare  to  the  sympathetic 
foreigner,  "We  are  more  French  than  the  French." 
Their  former  nationality,  that  of  their  German  grand- 
fathers and  grandmothers,  now  has  to  be  forced  upon 
them,  "  by  a  system  of  repression  only  to  be  compared  to 
the  Russian  rule  in  Poland."  "Thrice  unhappy  Alsace," 
says  this  observer,  "in  the  position  of  a  richly  endowed 
orphan — alike  the  darling  and  the  prey  of  one  jealous 
foster  parent  after  another — the  ill-fated  country  seems 
doomed  to  perpetual  disenchantment  and  betrayal,  her 
affections  no  sooner  firmly  implanted  than  they  are 
torn  up  by  the  bleeding  roots." 

Alsace,  weeping  in  1789  because  torn  from  Germany  by 
France,  and  weeping  in  1889  because  torn  from  France 
by  Germany,  only  illustrates  more  dramatically  than 


52  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

ordinary  experience  the  universal  secret  of  human  and 
social  progress.  The  Negroes  carried  away  from  Africa 
with  heart-breaking  cries  for  home  and  made  the 
slaves  of  American  masters,  in  the  third  generation  will 
not  go  back  to  their  old  home,  not  even  to  be  rulers  of 
an  African  Republic.  Richard  Cceur  de  Lion  was  taunted 
by  some  of  his  fellow  crusaders  with  being  King  of  only 
half  an  island,  but  now  across  the  Scotch  border,  scene 
of  centuries  of  wars  between  Highlands  and  Lowlands, 
comes  a  Gladstone  to  rule  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great 
Britain,  which  has  digested  into  one  blood  and  one 
patriotism  Celt,  Saxon,  Dane,  Norseman,  Teuton. 
Every  page  of  domestic  or  national  history  has  its  specimen 
facts  to  illustrate  the  law  that  men  always  seek  contact; 
contact  tends  to  union  and  multitudes  grow  into  societies. 
When  contact  has  not  produced  union,  it  has  been  because 
it  was  not  contact.  Such  is  the  case  of  Ireland  and 
England,  and  of  the  still  disparted  elements  of  the 
Austrian  Empire.  They  have  not  been  allowed  to 
coalesce.  One  reason  for  the  easy  conquest  of  the  Gauls 
by  Ceaser  was  the  fact  that  he  always  found  allies  among 
them. 

The  mother  serves  her  child  and  thereby  comes  to  love 
it.  The  foster  mother  loves  the  child  she  nurses,  though 
it  belongs  to  another  woman.  Instances  are  known  to 
all  who  have  had  experience  in  such  matters  of  the  wet 
nurse  in  whose  heart  the  strange  child  supplanted  her 
own  baby.  We  love  our  schoolmates,  the  playmates  of 
our  childhood.  The  young  men  of  the  neighbourhood 
having  "gone  West,"  the  farmers'  daughters  of  the 
district  marry  the  hired  men,  though  these  are  not  their 
social  equals.  Propinquity  makes  marriages,  and  more. 
It  makes  the  love  of  parent  and  child,  of  neighbour,  of 
childhood's  comrades,  of  villagers  and  of  fellow  country- 


CONTACT  MAKES   SPIRITUAL  UNION       53 

men.  The  modern  wealth  production  which  is  bringing 
all  men  into  propinquity  has  for  its  sure  end  making 
all  these  men  lovers.  We  always  find  the  seers  and 
poets,  no  matter  how  far  back  we  go,  prophecying  a 
universal  humanity.  While  they  were  singing  the  little 
sails  were  putting  forth  to  join  bay  to  bay  in  what  becomes 
international  commerce.  And  the  international  com- 
merce, with  its  arbitrations,  expositions  and  alliances, 
is  well  on  the  way  to  become  the  international  Common- 
wealth they  dreamed  of.  So  far  and  so  long  as  this 
civilisation  spreads  and  endures  it  will  work  thither. 
Contact  produces  love;  love  makes  more  contact.  Love 
makes  men  serve  each  other;  men  serving  each  other 
come  to  love.  It  was  a  glimpse  of  this,  though  from  a 
low,  prudential  point  of  view,  that  guided  Benjamin 
Franklin  in  one  of  his  most  characteristic  acts  of  policy. 
When  in  the  Pennsylvania  Legislature  he  found  that  a 
certain  member  had  apparently  some  sort  of  prejudice 
against  him.  He  thereupon  borrowed  a  valuable  book 
from  his  "mortal  antipathy,"  calculating,  and  rightly  as 
the  event  proved,  that,  having  done  him  a  kindness,  the 
current  of  feeling  would  be  reversed  in  his  favour. 
Whether  love  causes  the  contact  or  is  caused  by  it  we 
cannot  tell  any  more  than  we  can  tell  what  the  attraction 
of  gravitation  is.  But  this  we  know,  that  when  men  come 
within  attracting  distance  of  each  other  love  appears 
and  becomes  operative.  This  is  the  fundamental  fact 
chronicled  in  the  word  which  describes  human  contact — 
society,  the  state  of  being  friends. 

Even  in  relations  which  have  come  to  seem  intolerably 
cruel,  like  those  of  slavery  or  the  wage  system,  or  the 
capitalist  and  the  community,  the  idea  of  reciprocity  is 
always  of  the  substance  of  the  union.  No  slave  owner, 
great  employer,  monopoliser  of  commodities,  millionaire, 


54  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

bondholder  or  money  lender  was  ever  so  conservative 
that  he  was  not  anxious  to  prove  that  it  was  for  the 
good  of  his  people,  or  the  people  that  "God"  or  "the 
nature  of  things"  or  "right"  had  put  the  power  into 
his  hands.     The  political  economists  and  the  clergymen, 
the  majority  of  whom  have  in  all  periods  supported  the 
established  order,  as  the  majority  of  all  men  do  and 
as  it  is  proper  they  should  do,  are  at  infinite  pains  to 
expound  this   beneficence  of  the  power  of  the  great. 
This  is  well.     We  may  hear  the  false  note  of  hypocrisy 
and  flattery  and  stupidity  and  cowardice  running  like 
a   sub-bass   through   the   chorus    of   this    appreciation. 
But  the  pretence  of  the  King  that  he  is  the  Father  of  his 
people,  and  of  the  capitalist  that  he  exists  only  to  econo- 
mise and  invest  the  wealth  of  the  community,  is  built 
after  all  on  a  foundation  of  reciprocities  which  are  eternal 
if  he  is  mortal.     He  may  abuse  a.nd  usurp,  but  is  still 
a  functionary  of  the  whole.     It  is  still  society,  and  they 
must  keep  it  going,   and  the  reciprocities  will  go  on 
evolving  through  one  incarnation  after   another,   long 
after  Kings  and  Kingships,  monopolists  and  monopoly 
have  sunk  into  their  place  in  the  fossiliferous  strata  of 
society. 

So  paradoxical  is  the  constitution  of  things,  so  mys- 
terious the  unity,  so  obvious  the  duality  of  all,  that  it 
seems  possible  to  state  everything  as  the  opposite  of 
itself.  Fear  is  one  of  the  springs  of  love.  By  the  same 
law  by  which  the  dog  licks  the  hands  of  the  vivisecting 
surgeon  who  is  torturing  him,  the  Christian  adores  the 
God  that  chastens,  and  a  new  tenderness  brings  closer 
mother  and  child  after  a  struggle  of  disobedience  and 
discipline.  Out  of  the  fear  of  the  Saxons  for  the  Normans, 
the  Scots  for  the  English,  has  come  the  love  of  the  people 
of  the  United  Kingdom  for  their  Union  Jack.  Wherever 


CONTACT,.  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION         55 

the  multitude  calls  itself  a  "people"  they  stay  together 
by  choice,  but  the  history  of  every  one  of  these  assem- 
blages shows  that  it  was  brought  together  by  force. 

Love  brings  and  holds  men  together  because  each  has 
something  all  the  others  want ;  the  discovery  that  each, 
too,  has  in  himself  potentialities,  as  of  hate,  also  may 
bring  and  hold  men  together.  ,. 

For  love  has  another  name,  hate — "even  hate  is  but 
a  mask  of  love's."  Love  of  justice,  right,  truth,  is  hate 
of  lies,  oppression  and  wrong.  Love  must  pull  down 
as  well  as  build  up,  must  come  with  sword  as  well  as 
with  peace.  There  has  always  been  at  least  one  new 
war  for  every  kind  of  love.  The  greatest  love  that  has 
yet  spoken  among  men,  the  gospel  of  peace,  has  been 
the  greatest  war-breeder  of  all.  Hate  is  the  name  for 
love's  destructive  moments.  But  the  two  names,  as 
the  two  moods,  are  not  of  equal  rank.  It  may  be  as  neces- 
sary to  destroy  as  to  construct,  to  clear  away  the  ruins 
as  to  plan  the  palace  of  the  people  that  is  to  rise  in  their 
place.  But  it  is  not  as  noble  work.  It  is  not  the  creative. 
The  statues  of  infamy  with  which  the  people  of  the 
Italian  cities  used  to  impale  the  wicked  and  the  oppressor 
in  the  common  memory  are  gone  out  of  sight  and  out  of 
memory.  The  statues  of  the  good  and  beautiful  remain. 
We  live,  says  Wordsworth,  by  admiration,  hope  and 
love.  The  greatest  of  these,  says  Paul,  is  love. 
The  faith  of  hate  is  not  one  by  which  a  party  of  progress 
can  be  raised  and  kept  together.  Against  the  evils  of 
the  Old  Regime  the  sullen  hatred  of  the  victims  could 
enroll  no  valid  opposition;  not  until  those  came  who 
called  in  the  clarion  notes  of  the  brotherhood  of  all  men — 
liberty,  fraternity  and  equality — were  the  people  fused 
into  the  conquering  host  of  freedom. 

Because  love  is  the  force  that  holds  men  together 


56  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

crafty  men  have  conjured  with  it  to  snare  the  people. 
Priests,  Kings,  Slaveholders,  Capitalists,  have  taken  its 
holy  name,  and  not  in  vain.  They  have  cried  Peace  when 
there  was  no  Peace,  Love  when  there  was  no  Love, 
because  they  knew  how  potent  was  the  mere  sound  of 
the  words  to  charm  the  heart  of  the  multitude  always 
thirsting  for  love.  The  depredators  used  to  rob  with 
the  tools  of  hate;  now  they  rob  with  the  tools  of  love. 
The  professions  of  love  of  God  so  profusely  made  by  the 
prelacy  of  the  Church  of  self-interest  are  in  truth  denials 
of  their  real  Lord — the  Devil.  These  men  put  on  the 
livery  of  love,  not  to  do  its  work  but  to  prevent  its  work 
from  being  done.  Wesley  said  he  was  not  going  to  let 
the  Devil  have  all  the  good  tunes.  Love  is  too  universally 
human  to  be  left  any  longer  to  be  monopolised  by  the 
Church  and  the  poets.  The  real  love  does  not  mean  that 
the  people  are  to  continue  at  peace  with  the  oppressor 
and  with  reconciliation  submit  to  the  wrong.  Mankind 
has  been  called  to  do  so  for  centuries  in  the  name  of 
love  and  religion,  but  it  has  been  a  false  love,  a  false 
religion.  Love  is  the  greatest  of  revolutionists,  for  its 
sentiment  and  its  science  both  teach  that  the  relations 
between  the  oppressor  and  the  oppressed  run  athwart 
the  true  line  of  union,  and  therefore  cannot  endure. 
It  taught  in  the  last  century  that  the  relation  of  tyrant 
and  people,  in  this  century  that  those  of  capitalist  and 
producer,  are  not  associative,  are  not  friendly,  and 
therefore  must  come  to  an  end. 

The  labour  movement  proposes  peace,  in  seeking  the 
conciliation  of  the  diverse  multitudes  co-operating  in 
fact  though  not  yet  in  spirit  in  the  business  world. 
The  people  want  peace.  There  is  no  people  until  there 
is  peace.  Up  to  the  line  of  village  or  nation,  within 
which  the  inhabitants  live  in  peace,  there  is  a  people. 


57 

At  the  frontier,  the  border,  the  people  end;  beyond, another 
people,  and  in  the  sparsely  settled  borderland  there  is 
war.  The  great  poet  Dante,  the  great  philosopher 
Kant,  all  great  poets,  all  great  philosophers  tell  us  the 
social  destiny  is  Peace.  Peace  is  the  goal  of  all  human 
association.  Peace  is  the  equilibrium  of  love.  It  must 
be  industrial  as  well  as  political.  Our  political  peace 
exists  in  patches.  We  have  the  German  peace,  the 
French  peace,  the  peace  of  the  Saxon  Heptarchy,  but  no 
peace  between  Germany,  France,  Russia,  England,  nothing 
but  truces.  The  Pax  Romana,  the  Pax  Brittanica,  but 
not  yet  the  Pax  Humana,  of  which  these  others  are  so 
surely  the  dawn.  Peace,  too,  is  progressive.  To  have 
established  one  kind  is  but  the  beginning  of  the  series. 
National  peace  got,  we  want  international;  after  political 
peace,  industrial. 

Love  teaches  that  whatever  social  contrivance  seeks  to 
take  without  giving,  to  have  without  sharing,  to  do  other- 
wise than  it  would  be  done  by,  seeks  profit  for  itself  out  of 
loss  to  others,  violates  the  law,  and  is  therefore  doomed. 
This  love  knows  but  one  kind  of  peace — the  peace  of 
righteousness.  No  power  in  human  affairs  has  ever  been 
great  enough  to  silence  it ;  no  heredity  has  been  long-lived 
enough  to  outlast  it.  Love  tells  us  never  to  rest  as  long  as 
one  human  relation  remains  awry  with  hate,  fear,  force,  or 
selfishness,  or  ignorance.  In  the  face  of  the  Cassars  love 
raised  the  hand  which  at  last  pushed  their  Empire  into 
the  dust.  It  uttered  to  slavery  and  to  feudal  Europe 
the  prophet's  cry  it  is  now  addressing  to  modern  Business, 
"Love  your  enemies."  To  love  is  to  build  up,  to  give 
to,  to  make  right,  to  defend,  to  emancipate,  to  enlarge, 
to  straighten,  to  fraternalise,  to  warm,  to  uphold,  to 
free  from  hate  and  fear.  To  love  the  King,  dethrone 
him.  To  love  the  slave  owner,  free  his  slaves.  To  love 


58  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  priest,  make  him  one  of  a  universal  congregation  of 
divine  communion.  To  love  the  business  man,  cure 
him  of  his  leprosy  of  greed,  eating  into  him  with  the 
terrors  of  panic  and  bankruptcy. 

If  one  fact  shines  more  clearly  than  another  in  the 
science  of  society  it  is  that  men  will  always  pay  the 
highest  price  for  sympathy.  When  Coriolanus  solicits 
the  people  of  Rome  for  their  votes  which  are  to  make 
him  great  and  rich,  all  that  they  ask  in  return  is  sympathy. 
"The  price,"  says  the  citizen  to  him,  "is  to  ask  it 
kindly. "  Tweed's  robberies  of  millions  while  Boss  of 
New  York  fell  severest  upon  the  poor,  and  are  still 
making  their  lives  heavier.  But  these  are  not  the  facts 
by  which  they  remember  him.  He  had  a  bluff  Prince 
Hal  air  of  kindliness,  and  once  he  gave  the  poor  of  New 
York  50,000  tons  of  coal  when  the  winter  frost  was  on 
them,  and  to  this  day  if  his  name  is  spoken  around 
Mulberry  Bend  or  on  Eleventh  Avenue,  it  is  to  be  blessed, 
not  to  be  cursed.  Lincoln  is  stealing  the  hearts  of  the 
people  away  from  Washington.  "Our  first  American," 
Lowell  calls  Lincoln.  Washington  loved  us  not  only 
greatly  but  passionately.  How  unaffected  is  the  tender- 
ness of  his  Inaugural  and  Addresses.  "My  beloved 
country,"  my  "inviolable  attachment,"  my  "solicitude 
that  can  end  only  with  my  life,"  "in  offering  to  you  these 
counsels  of  an  old  and  affectionate  friend,"  my  "fervent 
love."  Our  hearts  have  not  done  justice  to  that  heart. 
At  twenty-two,  when  defending  the  "cold  and  barren 
frontiers"  of  Virginia,  he  wrote  that  the  "supplicating 
tears  of  the  women  and  the  moving  petitions  of  the 
men  melt  me  into  such  deadly  sorrow  that  I  solemnly 
declare,  if  I  know  my  own  mind,  I  could  offer  myself  a 
willing  sacrifice  to  the  butchering  enemy  provided  that 
would  contribute  to  the  people's  ease." 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION         59 

When  the  Hessians  after  accepting  the  surrender  of 
the  troops  at  Fort  Washington  began  massacreing  their 
prisoners,  Washington,  looking  over  from  Fort  Lee  across 
the  Hudson,  wept  and  sobbed  like  a  child.  What 
greater  love  hath  any  man  than  this,  that  he  lay  down 
his  life  for  his  friend?  It  was  of  the  essence  of  Washing- 
ton's service  to  his  people  that  he  offered  his  life  for  them, 
day  after  day  and  year  after  year,  as  no  other  great 
American  has  been  called  upon  to  do.  His  passions  were 
volcanic — so  volcanic  that  he  had  to  keep  them  under 
a  discipline  like  that  of  the  steam  in  the  engine.  Wash- 
ington's love  was  great  enough  for  a  nation,  and  tender 
enough  for  Lafayette.  But  he  was  not  magnetic,  and 
his  reserve  was  increased  by  the  manners  of  his  times. 
It  is  not  on  record  that  Lincoln  ever  showed  a  touch  of 
austerity,  official  or  personal.  Always  a  patient  tend- 
erness streams  from  him,  and  creates  the  aureole  of  love 
in  which  he  always  stands  in  the  eyes  of  the  people. 
Washington  loved  the  people  as  deeply  as  Lincoln,  but 
Lincoln  had  the  greater  power  of  personal  expression. 
The  sympathetic  or  magnetic  man  is  in  high  disfavor 
among  our  social  economists,  but  the  people's  hearts  are 
his. 

Wallace  marks  as  a  decisive  point  in  the  evolution  of 
man  the  moment  when  the  power  of  intelligence  appeared 
as  a  "variation"  in  one  of  the  species  of  animals  strug- 
gling for  emergence.  With  that  variation  the  history  of 
the  first  citizen  of  the  world,  man,  begins.  John  Fiske 
dates  the  origin  of  society  from  a  second  "variation"  in 
the  evolution — the  appearance  of  conscience  in  one  of 
the  species  of  men.  Thenceforward  only  those  species  of 
men  could  survive  which,  by  that  variation  of  conscience, 
and  by  accumulated  growth  of  it,  had  the  help  of  family, 
tribal,  national  life.  "  Bare  is  the  back, "  says  the  prov- 


60  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

erb,  "with  no  brother  behind  it."  Perhaps  the  sym- 
pathetic man,  the  man  who  loves,  is  the  third  "  variation.  " 
All  the  world  loves  a  lover.  Society  accumulates  these 
"variations,"  and  amiability  becomes  the  fashion.  The 
men  and  women,  the  Puritanic  creeds,  the  despotic  mon- 
archical institutions,  that  are  non-conductors  of  the  sym- 
pathetic fluid,  die  off.  Of  two  hands  that  bring  help  to 
the  poor  one  will  be  cursed  and  the  other  beloved.  A 
genius  of  love  like  Dickens  appears  and  sings  his  Christ- 
mas Carol  and  good-will  diffuses  itself,  making  us  con- 
scious of  a  fragrance  in  each  other,  and  the  sweet  perfume 
rises  from  every  child  and  from  everyone  poor,  everyone 
weak,  weary  and  oppressed.  As  the  example  of  a  Shake- 
speare's genius  enlarges  the  common  vocabularies  for  all 
time,  a  Christ,  a  Lincoln,  opens  the  hearts  of  men  to  love 
each  other  as  they  loved  us.  The  universal  sweetening 
of  the  social  tone,  in  family,  industry,  society,  made 
known  by  the  history  of  manners,  is  the  fact  in  which 
the  survival  of  the  magnetic  man  is  recording  itself.  The 
magnetic  man  came  to  stay.  It  was  he  who  could  get 
a  wife,  friends,  votes,  customers,  help,  office,  fame.  He 
can  perpetuate  himself,  and  his  tribe  increases. 

The  magnetic  scoundrel  is,  so  far  as  he  is  magnetic, 
nearer  the  true  type  of  manhood  than  the  vinegar-faced 
saint.  These  smiles,  friendly  words  and  kindly  deeds, 
though  trifles,  are  the  food  of  our  highest  natures.  Even 
if  insincere,  their  hypocrisy  has  the  merit  of  paying  trib- 
ute to  the  highest  virtue  we  know,  the  highest  due  man 
owes  to  man.  They  are  the  recognition  of  our  oneness. 
Why  should  we  give  the  high  place  to  him  who  while 
he  grants  us  "justice"  denies  us  these?  Is  there  any 
greater  cruelty  and  injustice  than  to  treat  a  fellow  man 
with  look  or  tone  of  hate  or  the  "I  am  holier  than 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION       61 

thou"  superiority?  Is  not  that  to  begin  to  play  Cain, 
and  to  dig  at  the  Very  cornerstone  of  the  foundation  of 
social  humanity?  Men  want  more  justice,  but  they 
will  not  take  any  less  friendliness.  If  the  magnetic 
man  is  a  villain;  if  he  is  one  of  those  born  to  fortune 
because  possessed  of  some  trick  of  voice  or  glance  that 
ambuscades  the  tiger's  heart  of  seducer  or  traitor  behind 
the  mimicry  of  love,  we  can  win  his  prey  from  him  not  by 
denouncing  him — with  how  many  maidens  and  people 
has  that  failed — but  only  by  a  better  love.  If  he  be  false, 
let  us  be  true,  and  live  the  love  he  plays.  The  surren- 
der of  their  hearts  to  him  by  the  people  is  a  tribute  to  the 
value  they  believe  was  in  him.  They  thought  they  were 
giving  up  to  the  love  that  is  the  true  law  of  life.  There 
are  no  true  politics,  no  true  marriages,  no  true  economies 
but  those  of  love.  When  we  get  "municipal  reform" 
it  will  be  because  we  have  achieved  a  municipal  ex- 
pression of  social  love.  When  we  get  the  Commonwealth 
it  will  be  because  we  have  stepped  up  into  the  elevation 
of  a  life  of  friendship  made  universal.  All  social  problems 
are  problems  of  union.  The  significance  of  the  social 
settlement  is  in  its  essay  to  re-establish  union  in  com- 
munities grown  so  large  that  all  the  social  connections 
are  endangered,  domestic  as  well  as  civic.  Neighbour- 
hood life,  with  its  censorships,  its  appreciations,  its 
loyalties,  connects  family  life  and  the  larger  associations 
of  state  and  nation,  and  without  it  there  can  be,  truly, 
neither  city  nor  nation.  The  social  settlement  reintro- 
duces  neighbourhood  love  into  city  life.  Reformers 
who  feel  themselves  possessed  of  powers  too  great  for 
anything  less  than  the  reconstruction  of  society  or  the 
revelation  of  a  new  religion  belittle  the  social  settlement. 
They  are  right  that  it  is  not  "the  solution."  There  may 
not  be  any  hope  of  a  "solution"  for  us,  but,  even  so,  the 


62  MAN.  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

social  settlement  is  likely  to  be  remembered.  While 
others  speculated  and  theorised  and  patented  compli- 
cated mechanisms  for  the  perpetual  motion  of  social 
harmony,  this  simple  and  loving  impulse  offered  itself 
as  a  sacrifice  to  prove  that  all  that  men  needed  to  do  to 
Eve  together  was  to  live  together,  and  that  it  was  not 
sacrifice  but  delight,  and  honour,  and  safety.  When  the 
civilisation  arrives  in  which  "the  people's  hearts  are  the 
only  title  deeds,"  and  where  "a  man's  a  man  for  af 
that  and  a'  that,"  it  will  be  more  than  likely  to  look 
back  upon  our  social  settlements  as  its  precursors. 

Love  is  more  than  justice,  as  the  beautiful  is  greater 
than  the  good ;  according  to  Goethe,  since  it  includes  the 
good  and  adds  something  to  it,  it  is  the  good  made 
perfect.  Love  is  creating  itself  afresh  every  hour. 
When  we  denounce  slavery  as  the  sum  of  all  villainies 
it  is  because  we  have  advanced  beyond  the  point  at 
which  love  spared  the  lives  of  the  conquered.  We  now 
wish  to  spare  that  which  makes  life  worth  living.  But 
even  within  the  area  of  slavery  there  were  vast  currents 
of  love  playing  between  master  and  slave.  The  good- 
will of  the  master  demands  that  he  and  his  slaves  live 
kindly  together.  It  was  their  consciousness  of  this 
which  made  the  Southern  people  feel  so  outraged  by  the 
characterisation  of  their  "institution"  which  was  spread 
throughout  the  North.  Their  indignation  was  honest. 
The  laws  of  the  South  for  the  protection  of  the  slave 
showed  that  there  was  a  social  good-will,  too,  as  well  as 
a  personal.  That  there  should  have  been  any  recognition 
by  law  of  the  rights  of  slaves  who  were  utterly  at  the 
mercy  of  these  superiors  is  proof  enough  of  the  irrepressible 
demand  of  good-will  for  utterance.  As  strong  forces 
of  good-will  are  pulling  on  the  capitalist  to  make  him  a 
"good"  employer  as  on  the  Southerner  to  make  him  a 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION         63 

"good"  master.  Our  whole  body  of  labour  laws  and 
state  regulation,  the  exhortations  to  share  profits,  deal 
kindly,  release  the  children,  and  the  like,  have  for  their 
aim  to  make  "good"  employers.  The  radical  reformers 
are  impatient  with  these  "palliatives,"  because  into 
their  minds  has  entered  the  conception  of  a  still  higher 
creation.  But  it  will  strengthen,  not  weaken,  them  to 
ponder  these  proposals  until  they  clearly  see  that  they, 
too,  are  steps  in  advance — steps  for  the  victims  to  whom 
they  would  offer  something  better  than  they  have — 
steps  for  the  rulers,  who  offer  more  than  they  have  been 
giving.  It  will  strengthen  not  weaken  the  radical 
to  grasp  this.  Because,  if  society  has  made  an  advance 
instead  of  a  retreat  in  adopting  the  palliative,  it  is  all 
the  more  certain  that  the  next  step  will  also  be  an  advance. 
The  reformers  who  argue  that  what  society  has  done 
has  been  a  reaction  and  "all  wrong"  succeed  only 
in  proving  that  it  is  moving  away  from  them.  It  is 
more  inspiring,  because  more  true,  to  perceive  that  its 
movement  it  always  forward. 

It  is  not  true  that  self-interest  is  the  only  or  the  supreme 
motive  of  men  in  society,  but  there  is  a  lie  within  the  lie. 
Man  has  been  falsely  told  that  this  self-interest  could 
be  only  a  self-interest  of  the  individual.  The  self- 
interest  of  the  whole,  which  is  as  real  a  fact  as  the  self- 
interest  of  the  one,  and  much  greater,  has  been  denied. 
Love  is  not  the  only  force;  society  is  not  the  only  fact. 
The  force  of  self-interest,  the  fact  of  the  individual,  are 
co-ordinate  and  equal  with  those.  Love  is  that  which 
makes  us  do  for  others ;  self-interest  is  that  which  makes 
us  do  for  ourselves.  A  universe  of  love  unopposed  by 
self-interest,  of  self-interest  not  centripetallised  by 
love,  would  be  a  universe  either  without  orbits  or 
without  centres.  A  religion  that  did  not  preach  self- 


64  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

interest  would  be  only  half  a  religion.  "God  is  love" 
is  but  half  the  fact.  Love  and  self-interest  in  harmony 
is  the  full  fact.  That  is  the  Supreme  Being.  Our 
philosophers  are  partisans  of  self-interest.  Our  priests, 
partisans  of  love.  The  best  mind  flatters  itself  if  it 
believes  that  it  gets  so  much  as  a  half  truth  of  anything. 
Love  is  only  half  the  truth  of  union ;  the  utilitarian  need 
men  have  of  each  other  must  be  counted.  There  is  a 
third  force  of  coalescence — the  sense  of  duty.  Conscience 
as  well  as  sympathy  and  self-interest  tells  men  to  stand 
by  each  other  and  to  reciprocate.  The  science  of  society 
can  be  stated  in  terms  of  political  economy,  or  of  ethics, 
or  of  the  love  of  man  for  man.  Every  fact  of  the  past, 
every  hope  of  the  future,  is  a  fact  of  self-interest,  and 
conscience,  and  sympathy.  But  here  some  of  our  social 
philosophers  have  gone  astray.  They  begin  with  the 
highly  "scientific"  method  of  "isolation,"  and  discuss 
society  as  only  an  economic  organism — of  self-interest — 
eliminating  its  other  forces  and  facts  for  the  moment. 
Next,  they  forget  that  the  elimination  was  only  a  logical 
device  of  setting  aside  part  of  the  facts  to  concentrate 
attention  on  the  other,  and  finally  they  end  by  denying 
altogether  that  these  eliminated  forces  have  any  part 
to  play  in  the  mechanism.  The  practical  men  make 
the  same  mistake  when,  though  professing  in  the  language 
of  their  Friar  Tucks  to  be  the  Lord's  Stewards,  they 
administer  the  common  toil  and  common  resources  for 
their  own  selfish  advantage.  The  capitalist  who  says 
that  business  is  business  merely  puts  into  action  the 
mistake  of  the  philosopher  who  first  isolated,  then  for- 
got, and  at  last  denied,  the  existence  of  the  sympathetic 
forces  of  political  economy.  Hence  the  origin  of  the 
unscientific  heresy  widespread  in  our  "civilised"  world 
that  sympathy,  mercy,  justice,  love,  admiration,  hope 


CONTACT  MAKES   SPIRITUAL  UNION       65 

and  faith,  by  which  says  we  live — all  the  finer, 
higher  forces  of  human  nature — have  nothing  to  do  or 
say  in  Business,  Trade,  Industry,  Commerce,  Finance. 
This  school  prides  itself  on  being  of  hard-headed  men, 
and  they  sneer  at  sentiment.  Soft-hearted  men  are  as 
normal  as  hard-headed  ones.  History  has  no  lesson 
for  us  if  we  do  not  read  in  it  the  demonstration  that  the 
hard  heart  implies  a  soft  head — a  head,  that  is,  which 
does  not  and  cannot  understand  its  day,  and  cannot 
successfully  manage  its  own  affairs.  The  one  thing 
that  always  breaks  down  is  the  institution  of  cruelty,  no 
matter  how  hard  its  Alva's  head  may  be.  A  laughable 
aspect  of  this  is  that  those  who  take  this  view  arrogate 
to  themselves  specially  the  title  of  "scientific."  Theirs 
is  the  only  "scientific  political  economy."  This  is  the 
extravagance  of  small  minds.  Their  master,  Adam 
Smith,  grasped  both  sides  of  social  science  and  wrote  a 
theory  of  the  moral  sentiment  to  add  the  philosophy  of 
sympathy  to  that  of  self-interest  in  his  "Wealth  of 
Nations."  A  self-interest  which  harmonises  with  love,  as 
the  centrifugal  with  the  centripetal,  is  a  loyalty,  a  corner- 
stone, a  sanity.  The  self-interest  which  declares  itself 
first  and  supreme  is  an  insanity,  a  usurper,  a  vandal. 
The  chief  significance  of  books  like  Kidd's  "Social 
Evolution,"  and  the  immeasurably  greater  "Ascent  of 
Man, "  by  Drummond,  is  that  they  demand  the  rights  of 
the  floor  for  the  sympathies  and  altruisms  which  have  for 
nearly  a  century  been  excluded  from  the  debate.  Altru- 
ism is  individualism  at  its  best.  Another  terror  gone, 
another  smile  come.  One  runs  little  risk  of  being  a  false 
prophet  in  predicting  that  we  are  at  the  beginning  of  a 
renaissance  of  the  literature  of  social  love. 

Self-sacrifice  has  been  lost  to  its  proper  use.     It  has 
acquired  the  sense  of  self-destruction,  from  the  fate  of 


66  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  pioneer  discoverers  of  the  laws  of  life.  The  men 
who  first  see  that  to  live  their  best  men  must  be  free 
to  think  and  utter,  and  who  with  the  ardour  of  truth  anp 
genius  proceed  to  lead  their  fellows  in  this  freedom  have 
had  to  drink  the  hemlock,  wear  the  thorns,  stand  in  the 
burning  fagots.  But  we  can  look  through  these  accidents 
of  bad  temper  or  cruel  selfishness  and  detect  that  the 
real  event  was  not  the  stake,  or  the  cross,  or  the  poisoned 
draught,  but  the  discovery  by  a  genius  of  social  invention 
of  a  new  reciprocity.  The  fire  burns  out,  the  cross  rots, 
but  the  new-found  mutuality  survives,  and  all  men  get 
freedom  to  worship  as  they  will,  or  get  the  freedom  of 
the  citizen  by  giving  it.  Here  is  the  true  meaning  of 
sacrifice,  to  make  sacred,  which  is  to  make  right,  which 
is  the  law  of  life.  Martyrdom  is  always  the  fate  of  the 
pioneer  in  sacrifice,  whether  it  be  the  introduction  of 
umbrellas,  Christianity,  railroads  or  emancipation.  Ex- 
perience does  teach;  give  it  time.  When  mankind  has 
long  enough  contemplated  itself  it  is  always  compelled 
in  the  end  to  worship  those  whom  it  crucified  for  first 
bearing  it  the  word  of  some  discovery  of  the  secrets  of 
progress,  and  it  will  become  educated  to  watch  for  these 
messages  as  we  watch  for  the  buds  of  spring.  To  the 
majority  of  his  day  the  martyr  is  a  fool.  It  is  the  majority 
that  is  truly  the  fool  to  discourage  unto  death  those 
who  have  it  in  them  to  lead  in  a  better  way.  Sacrifice 
is  devotion  to  the  good,  and  that,  whether  in  individual 
or  society,  does  not  mean  suffering  but  the  prevention  of 
suffering.  For  the  individual  it  means  the  choice  of 
a  higher  pleasure ;  for  society  it  means  all  the  remunerative 
self-surrenders  of  the  home,  the  state,  civilisation. 
It  is  not  a  loss  but  a  gain  million-fold.  Self-sacrifice 
is  preached  with  so  little  acceptance  as  the  law  of  life 
because  so  few  of  the  preachers  or  the  hearers  really 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION          67 

know  what  the  law  means.  It  means  not  destruction 
but  salvation.  The  destruction  of  the  martyr  has  come, 
not  from  their  self-sacrifice  but  from  the  failure  of  the 
others  to  adopt  the  law  of  self-sacrifice,  which  means  safety 
and  joy  for  all.  Self-sacrifice  is  a  law  of  universal  jurisdic- 
tion which  must  be  obeyed  universally  to  produce  its  fruits. 
To  give  is  to  "sacrifice,"  and  when  all  give  to  all  where  is 
the  "  sacrifice "  in  the  popular  sense?  There  is  none,  unless 
it  is  a  "  sacrifice  "  to  have  a  home  or  a  club  where  you  are 
always  welcome,  or  a  country  which  will  send  its  fleets 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth  to  protect  you,  or  will  educate 
all  your  children  for  you,  or  will  carry  your  letter  five 
thousand  miles  for  a  copper.  To  consecrate  oneself 
to  the  right  is  always  to  move  on  a  little  in  advance.  The 
same  spirit  of  progress  which  creates  an  institution 
hastens  the  next  instant  to  displace  it  by  something 
better.  "We  must  follow  what  is  right,"  Aristotle 
teaches,  "not  what  is  established."  But  early  man, 
conscious  above  everything  of  the  extreme  difficulty  of 
effecting  any  working  arrangement  of  men  and  things — 
a  difficulty  we  all  demonstrate  afresh  the  moment  we 
attempt  to  do  anything  new  in  house,  shop  or  state — 
could  hardly  help  looking  upon  the  innovator  as  a  de- 
stroyer. We  of  latter  days  did  not  treat  Jonas  Hanway 
and  William  Lloyd  Garrison  so  well  that  we  can  affect 
to  be  greatly  superior  to  the  aboriginal  conservator. 
But  the  nearer  the  people  were  to  the  primitive  institu- 
tionalisations  the  more  vivid  was  their  sense  of  the 
difficulty  of  getting  any  institutions  to  work,  and  the 
more  savage  was  their  treatment  of  the  sacrificers  who 
proposed  a  change  in  institutions  and  urged  them  to 
follow  not  what  is  established  but  what  is  right.  Thus 
self-sacrifice  has  been  made  one  of  the  most  repellent 
words  to  the  multitude,  because  encrusted  with  cruel 


68  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

memories.  To-day  public  intelligence,  even  among  the 
intelligent,  has  hardly  got  farther  than  to  welcome  the 
evolution  of  thought  in  what  are  crudely  called  the 
"natural"  sciences.  Evolution  of  thought  in  social 
science  still  brings  with  it  martyrdom.  There  were  some 
great  ones  in  Church  and  state  who  reproduced  against 
Darwin  as  far  as  they  could  the  enginery  of  persecution 
which  gave  Galileo  his  welcome.  But  the  spirit  of  the 
age  had  carried  the  common  mind  too  far  for  that  to 
succeed,  and  Darwin  became  in  his  lifetime  one  of  the 
great  names  of  the  world.  But  general  odium  is  still 
the  lot  of  those  who  suggest  that  the  principles  and 
institutions  of  social  science  need  to  be  re-stated,  and  re- 
formed to  suit  modern  needs.  In  the  labour  movement 
the  law  of  sacrifice,  consecration  to  the  right,  is  that  the 
wealth  all  produce  all  must  share;  that  since  capital 
exists  only  by  the  labours  of  all,  all  must  have  a  voice 
in  its  direction;  that  property,  like  government,  must 
exist  for  the  welfare  of  all;  and,  like  government,  can 
have  no  powers  it  does  not  derive  from  the  consent  of  all. 
The  suggestions  of  torture  which  make  self-sacrifice 
and  the  crown  of  thorns  synonyms  in  our  minds  are  but 
temporary  and  accidental.  It  is  self-sacrifice  to  give 
each  other  the  habeas  corpus,  sea-coast  defences,  city 
police,  the  vote,  free  speech,  the  reciprocal  good  morning 
when  we  meet.  It  is  that  which  makes  our  life  together 
safe  and  beautiful.  Can  we  ever  rescue  the  word  from 
the  taint  put  upon  it  by  the  excess  of  primitive  zeal  to 
save  the  established  so  hardly  got?  What  Alexandrian 
libraries  of  the  miseries,  errors  and  follies  of  Humanity 
struggling  to  emerge  are  all  summed  up  in  the  signification 
of  destruction  which  has  overgrown  the  greatest  word 
of  man — sacrifice — to  make  sacred.  Our  mission  is  to 
redeem  that  word  and  make  sacrifice  a  word  of  joy,  hope, 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION        69 

gladness  and  worldly  success,  because  through  sacrifice 
only  can  there  be  success  for  all.  The  law  of  sacrifice, 
making  sacred,  and  the  law  of  self-sacrifice,  making  each 
other  sacred,  or  whole,  is  the  law  of  love.  This  law  is 
that  on  which  all  progress  of  man  in  association  or 
organised  friendliness  has  been  built.  If  it  has  furnished 
the  statute  for  the  past  pacifications  of  human  encounter, 
we  can  confidently  expect  that  it  and  it  alone  can  legislate 
us  out  of  the  crisis  we  find  ourselves  now  in. 

It  is  only  by  labouring  that  man  can  fulfil  his  function 
as  creator.  When  man  works  creation  is  under  way. 
Labour  as  the  exercise  of  faculty  is  the  greatest  happiness, 
and  as  the  fabricator  of  nature,  man  and  society  is  the 
highest  prerogative  of  humanity.  All  faculty  demands 
expression,  and  the  work  of  creation  is  infinite.  Labour 
with  love  is  the  divine  in  action  at  its  highest  power. 
This  divine  service  is  the  true  worship,  and  was  pre- 
figured by  the  sacrifice  by  primitive  man  of  fruits  and 
yearling  kids,  the  doves  and  the  first-born  of  every 
flock. 

All  labourers  serve  each  other,  however  unwittingly,  but 
as  they  rise  into  the  consciousness  of  social  love  and 
learn  the  laws  of  life  and  the  fruits  of  reciprocity,  they 
desire  as  the  greatest  good  that  all  shall  share  in  all 
labour.  Training  in  the  manual  arts  appears  in  education 
to  restore  to  all  classes  the  privilege  of  participation  in 
all  kinds  of  labour  and  of  the  exercise  of  every  faculty. 
The  individual  also  seeks  his  full  development,  and  this 
manual  training  is  democracy  creating  these  new  rights. 

Any  life  tends  to  become  sacred  as  it  makes  all  life 
better,  and  every  man  is  valuable  according  to  his 
creative  performance.  He  is  loved  according  to  his  love, 
but  used  according  to  his  usefulness.  To  develop  to 
the  fullest  his  faculty  for  the  service  of  life,  including 


70  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

himself,  is  the  highest  duty  and  privilege  of  the  individual, 
and  to  get  for  all  and  each  the  benefit  of  this  individual 
development  is  the  highest  function  of  society.  The 
establishment  of  this  freedom  of  opportunity  is  called 
Social  Equality,  and  its  object  is  to  encourage  the  growth 
of  every  variety  of  faculty.  Social  Equality  exists  to 
stimulate  individual  inequality.  This  social  function 
requires  social  action.  This  has  been  made  possible  by 
the  invention  of  the  state.  But  the  state  is  now  passing 
through  a  crisis  of  its  own,  and  is  temporarily  unable  to 
expand  with  the  needs  of  this  social  function  for  ex- 
pansion. Parliamentary  Government,  Talk  Government, 
Government  by  party  selfishness,  is  visibly  breaking 
down.  Government  by  politics,  changing  policies  and 
administrators  with  every  change  in  the  public  mood  or 
in  the  schemes  of  clique  greed,  is  proving  self -destructive. 
The  task  of  the  Labour  movement  is  forcing  the  reorgan- 
isation of  the  state  on  lines  more  nearly  parallel  with 
those  of  human  and  social  development. 

We  give  and  take ;  we  establish  social  equality  and  create 
social  rights.  But  it  would  be  a  hard  and  narrow  and 
unscientific  analysis  which  found  no  other  source  of 
rights  than  this  institution  of  reciprocities.  We  possess 
for  a  better  reason  than  because  we  have  given.  There 
is  something  deeper  in  nature  than  to  do  as  we  would  be 
done  by.  How  is  the  right  of  a  child  to  the  care  of  its 
parent  created?  To  what  reciprocity  is  it  due?  Whence 
comes  the  right  of  the  stranger  to  be  taken  on  the  first 
day  of  his  arrival  in  a  foreign  city  to  the  hospital  to  be 
treated  at  the  expense  of  the  public,  for  the  disease  or 
accident  which  has  laid  him  low?  The  right  of  common 
humanity  we  say.  But  what  right  is  that — what  is 
its  basis?  Here  we  come  upon  the  primal  fact  of  human 
nature,  and  not  of  human  nature  alone  but  of  all  nature. 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION       71 

The  reciprocities  we  speak  of,  the  Golden  Rule,  spring  out 
of  this  primal  fact.  We  speak  of  the  Golden  Rule  as  if 
it  were  itself  the  disclosure  of  some  fundamental  principle 
of  divine  action.  It  is  not  so;  it  rather  describes  a 
method  of  action,  a  rule,  as  we  call  it,  which  has  sprung 
out  of  a  fundamental  principle  which  underlies  it.  The 
Golden  Rule  is  a  description  of  a  social  process,  put  into 
the  form  of  an  exhortation  for  the  guidance  of  conduct, 
and  generalised  out  of  myriads  of  experimental  observa- 
tions, which  prove  that  for  some  reason  men  tend  to  do 
unto  others  as  they  would  that  others  should  do  to 
them.  But  the  exhortation  and  the  rule  of  conduct  do 
not  as  phrased  disclose  why  men  do  so  tend  or  why 
it  is  well  that  they  should  follow  this  rule.  The  deeper 
springs  of  the  care  of  the  child,  of  the  sick  stranger,  of 
the  man  who  fell  among  thieves,  are  the  same  as  those 
for  the  brooding  of  the  lark  over  her  young,  and  of  the 
union  of  effort  in  the  mutualities  of  the  postoffice  or  coast 
defence.  The  primal  fact  beneath  all  is  love — that  force 
which  is  wherever  life  is.  It  is  out  of  love  the  institutions 
of  reciprocities  come.  It  is  out  of  love  the  animal  rears 
its  young ;  it  is  out  of  love  the  deer  herd  and  the  sparrows 
flock  together,  and  men  gather  into  families,  tribes  and 
cities.  It  is  out  of  love  we  protect  the  animals  and 
form  societies  to  protect  the  birds  from  our  fashionable 
women.  Some  tenderer  man  than  the  ordinary  does 
one  thing  more  than  other  men  till  then  had  done — 
takes  notice  of  the  griefs  of  the  slave,  or  the  pitfalls  of 
ignorance,  or  the  miseries  wrought  by  private  war. 
He  steps  forward  to  serve  men  by  leading  them  to  take 
the  next  step.  He  probably  becomes  a  martyr.  We 
have  hardly  yet  emerged  from  the  primitive  barbarism 
where  men  cannot  see  that  change  eternal  is  the  law 
of  life  and  happiness,  and  so  kill  instead  of  welcomin 


72  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  heralds  of  change.  But  his  love  calls  the  love  of 
multitudes  into  action  in  a  new  path.  There  is  what 
we  call  a  movement — a  movement  for  universal  education, 
or  the  abolition  of  slavery,  or  prison  reform — and  at  the 
end  a  new  institution,  a  new  right,  a  new  social  reciprocity 
has  been  created.  That  which  stirs  in  the  heart  of  the 
mother  bird  in  the  nest  is  the  same  as  that  which  animates 
the  great  political  uprising  of  the  people.  It  is  love, 
and  from  the  lower  manifestation  to  the  higher  we  see 
it  range  from  the  instinctive  to  the  consciously  creative. 
A  Declaration  of  Independence,  an  Emancipation  Procla- 
mation, is  the  mother  brooding  of  the  nest  developed  to 
its  highest  manifestation — the  conscious  exercise  of  the 
creative  love  of  all  for  all.  All  the  politics,  all  the 
industry,  all  the  science,  all  the  religion  of  the  future  as  of 
the  past,  have  for  their  task  to  keep  this  force  at  work. 

Mankind  has  been  scattered  the  earth  over.  Now 
conies  the  moral  after  the  physical,  reunion  after  separa- 
tion, humanity  after  man.  Obeying  a  universal  law, 
the  physical  itself  begins  a  return  curve,  and  men  flying 
from  each  other  in  search  of  wealth  are  brought  back 
by  international  trade  to  see  that  the  wealth  was  in  those 
they  were  seeking  to  escape.  Our  mission  is  to  create 
society;  and  to  create  is  to  continue  farther  on  the  route 
already  taken.  The  human  need  and  heart  have  both 
always  demanded,  when  men  have  been  brought  into 
contact,  that  they  should  become  associates,  friends  to 
each  other.  It  is  out  of  this  simple  law  that  social 
institutions  have  grown.  To  what  is  so  cumbrously 
called  sociology — the  science  of  organised  friendliness — 
this  law  will  be  recognised  to  be  what  attraction  of 
gravitation  is  to  the  science  of  the  heavenly  bodies. 

Already  through  modern  industry  the  physical  contact 
of  all  the  peoples  is  an  almost  accomplished  fact.  The 


CONTACT  MAKES  SPIRITUAL  UNION        73 

steamship,  international  law,  the  bill  of  exchange,  the 
globe  trotter,  colonisation,  are  legislating  one  universal 
regime.  Japanese  employees  are  to  be  seen  in  American 
banking  houses.  America  has  accomplished  more  of 
this  physical  contact  within  her  borders  than  any  other 
nation.  It  must  either  civilise  these  varying  elements, 
different  nationalities,  different  classes,  and  make  citizens 
out  of  them ;  that  is,  establish  all  in  relations  of  equality, 
liberty  and  fraternity  toward  all,  or  must  see  them 
mutually  repellent,  held  together  only  by  a  military 
despotism.  The  first  is  the  method  which  history 
shows  to  be  characteristic  of  the  race.  Society  springs 
spontaneously  out  of  the  agglomeration  of  men.  That 
they  are  men  works  with  more  power  for  union  than  that 
they  are  white  and  black  works  for  disunion.  The 
body  politic,  like  the  physical  body,  can  unite  its  bleeding 
parts  by  the  process  known  to  the  doctors  as  union  by 
first  intention.  The  first  intention  of  men  in  contact 
is  love.  That  is  what  we  have  seen  going  on  in  America 
for  a  hundred  years.  Red  blood  flows  in  some  of  the 
proudest  white  veins  of  New  England.  Amalgamation 
of  the  master  and  servile  races  was  the  great  ethnical  fact 
of  slavery.  White  women  with  yellow  husbands,  almond- 
eyed,  are  not  infrequent  in  cosmopolitan  New  York  and 
Chicago,  and  they  tell  the  reporters,  for  the  press  must 
know  this,  too,  that  they  are  happy.  The  new  man 
being  formed  in  America  by  the  prismatic  concentration 
of  all  colours  is  but  the  precursor  of  the  unified  Humanity 
which  is  going  to  be  the  product  of  the  world-wide  union 
now  being  so  rapidly  consummated.  America  is  a 
home  rehearsal  of  the  drama  which  will  have  the  whole 
world  for  its  stage.  The  divergencies  and  antagonisms 
which  make  the  American  labour  agitator  sigh  for  the 
simplicity  of  the  problems  of  organisation  in  one-blooded 


74  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

Germany,  or  England,  or  France  guarantee  that  our 
labour  movement  will  issue  the  more  gloriously.  It  can 
find  no  other  possible  bond  than  that  of  a  cosmopolitan 
and  equal  humanity.  To  that  realisation  it  must  struggle. 
In  every  compromise  short  of  that  it  must  break  down. 
In  this  the  American  labour  movement  will  be  the 
advance  guard  of  the  whole  labour  movement.  For  the 
new  multitude  of  industry  outreaches  the  boundary  lines 
of  any  government.  To  unite  these  multitudes  in  a 
society  the  labour  movement  is  now  gathering  its 
forces  and  brooding  in  what  is  mistakenly  thought  to  be 
reaction.  Unity  there  must  be,  of  rich  and  poor,  learned 
and  unlearned,  high  and  low,  Jew,  Greek  and  Barbarian. 
The  present  territory  of  actual  contact  has  reached  such 
dimensions  through  travel,  international  trade,  industry 
and  finance,  social  good-will,  political  democracy,  that 
we  cannot  have  unity  on  the  basis  of  unity  of  race,  or 
politics,  or  theology.  They  who  are  to  be  made  one  are 
of  all  varieties  of  race,  politics  and  theologies.  There 
must  be  some  simpler,  some  greater,  tie.  Civilisation  has 
brought  about  a  contact  which  overruns  all  the  old 
boundaries,  of  race,  class,  country,  condition,  and  the 
old  unities  have  become  localisms. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SOCIAL    LOVE    CREATING   NEW  FORMS    OF   SOCIAL    LIFE 

THE  labour  movement  is  not  the  labourer's  movement 
any  more  than  the  abolition  of  slavery  was  the  Negro's 
movement.  The  labour  movement  is  specially  the 
movement  of  our  times.  The  labourers  alone  cannot 
conduct  it.  It  is  the  heir,  in  the  direct  line  of  descent, 
of  all  the  great  emancipations  which  have  made  civilisa- 
tion, and  its  questions  can  be  settled  only  by  the  use  of 
all  the  entailed  estates  of  progress.  Our  attempt  at 
civilisation  must  settle  the  labour  movement  or  be 
settled  by  it.  Thus  evolutionary  and  descendant,  the 
labour  movement  calls  for  no  new  laws  of  industry, 
politics,  society  or  religion.  But  when,  by  the  new 
application  of  the  old  laws,  the  labour  movement  has 
reached  its  goal,  industry,  politics,  society  and  religion 
will  be  found  to  have  been  revolutionised.  We  have 
politics  without  government,  business  without  industry, 
a  church  without  religion.  We  are  moving  toward  a 
government  without  politics,  industry  without  business, 
religion  without  a  church.  To-day,  all  over  its  territory, 
the  labour  movement — though  only  at  its  threshold — 
appears  to  halt.  The  movement  is  universally  described 
as  one  of  reaction.  One  social  solution  after  another, 
tentative,  moderate,  of  the  one-step-at-a-time,  evolu- 
tionary kind  has  been  proposed — eight  hours,  income 
tax,  trades-unionism,  government  railroads,  the  living 
wage,  reform  of  taxation,  profit  sharing,  abolition  of 
child  and  wife  labour,  anti-monopoly,  arbitration — all 

75 


76  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

have  been  rejected.  Louis  XVI.  feels  himself  so  strong- 
seated  on  the  throne  of  the  Bourbons  that  he  will  not 
negotiate  with  the  people.  He  will  not  even  receive 
their  committees.  "Under  the  present  system,"  says 
Carlyle,  "work  cannot  continue."  But  he  also  says 
that  "only  with  love  can  men  endure  each  other," 
and  as  work  must  continue,  men  are  compelled  to  be  with 
each  other,  and  thus  by  fate  led  to  love,  are  learning 
from  these  failures  that  they  must  seek  a  deeper  founda- 
tion for  unity,  since,  being  human,  they  must  have 
unity.  "An  unspeakable  religion,"  Carlyle  said  half  a 
century  ago,  "is  struggling  to  speak  itself."  The  labour 
movement  in  its  pause  to-day  is  changing  in  nothing 
so  visibly  as  in  the  rapidity  with  which  it  is  taking  on  a 
religious  tone.  Father  Ducey  comes  to  speak  words  of 
sympathy  to  the  Annual  Convention  of  the  American 
Federation  of  Labour  in  1895,  and  says  that  he  does  so 
in  obedience  to  the  inculcations  of  the  Labour  Encyclical 
of  the  head  of  his  Church.  The  Protestant  pulpit  in 
England,  Germany,  and,  at  last,  in  the  United  States,  is 
seeing  that  its  salvation  must  be  for  the  hell  of  industrial 
hatred  also  in  which  we  live.  A  foreign  socialist  is 
asked  to  speak  to  meetings  of  ministers  in  almost  all  the 
great  cities.  Fashionable  clergymen  subscribe  to  funds 
for  socialistic  propaganda,  as  Emerson  subscribed  for 
arms  for  John  Brown  in  Kansas.  The  Methodist  minis- 
ters of  Chicago  in  their  weekly  meeting  unanimously 
voted  a  gold  watch  and  chain  to  the  shepherd  who  kept 
his  arms  around  his  flock  at  Pullman  throughout  a 
long  strike  and  cried  out  for  help  so  that  the  whole 
country  heard.  The  churches  are  opening  their  lecture 
rooms  to  meetings  to  discuss  by  what  adjustment  love 
shall  be  made  the  law  in  the  business  world.  Labour 
Churches  are  being  formed.  In  Africa,  in  Paraguay,  in 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  77 

the  United  States,  co-operative  communities  are  being 
established  to  make  brotherhood  and  business  compatible 
with  each  other.  Some  of  their  constitutions  sound  like 
transcripts  from  some  new  word  of  Revelation.  "The 
way  to  live,"  says  one  of  these,  "is  to  love,  the  way  to 
Jove  is  to  serve,  the  way  to  serve  is  to  organise  ourselves 
together  as  one  person  that  we  may  become  members  of 
one  another."  This  is  the  declaration  under  which  the 
Christian  Corporation  of  farmers,  mechanics  and  scholars 
was  incorporated  under  the  laws  of  Nebraska,  February 
16,  1895,  that  its  members  might  dig,  sow,  reap  and  rest 
as  friends.  Thus  is  the  fire  of  love  brought  down  from 
heaven  to  plant  our  potatoes  and  bake  our  daily  bread. 
This  god  is  to  do  our  chores;  we  are  hitching  our  wagon 
to  a  star,  as  Emerson  told  us  to  do. 

Very  practical  is  the  reason  for  which  the  labour 
movement  is  "getting  religion."  The  sudden  and  vast 
expansion  of  modern  business  has  made  the  co-operative 
commonwealth  a  physical  fact.  Now  comes  the  next 
expansion — that  which  will  make  the  co-operative  com- 
monwealth a  moral  fact.  All  classes  and  all  countries  are 
partners  in  production,  and  partners,  too,  in  distribution, 
partners  in  the  efforts  and  partners  in  the  fruits.  The 
inhabitants  of  the  labour,  the  business  world,  find  them- 
selves members  of  a  larger  union  than  that  of  even  the 
greatest  society,  church,  government.  The  world  over 
they  are  as  a  matter  of  fact  members  one  of  another. 
But  they  have  no  head.  Even  unto  the  uttermost  parts 
of  the  earth  they  are  joined  together  in  the  infinite 
complexities  of  the  exchange  of  services.  But  this 
communion  has  no  name,  no  doctrine,  no  temple.  It  is 
an  association  which  is  not  yet  an  association.  Only 
a  religion  can  furnish  the  simple,  universal  tie  by  which 
One  can  be  made  of  all  these.  The  greatest  empire  is 


78  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

after  all  provincial.  Even  the  United  States  of  Europe 
and  America  would  be  too  small  to  include  all  the  co- 
workers  of  modern  life.  The  greatest  congregation  in 
the  world  to-day  is  this  of  the  workers.  Men  brought 
together  always  seek  a  bond  of  union  for  all,  and  this 
they  always  find  in  the  recognition  of  their  common 
humanity  and  of  their  common  aspirations  This  is 
religion.  When  the  union  is  of  the  family,  the  gens,  the 
religion  is  patriarchal ;  when  it  is  of  the  tribe,  the  religion 
is  tribal.  As  human  association  widens  the  religion, 
the  tie  that  binds,  widens.  When  humanity  becomes 
international  a  voice  rises,  as  scientific  as  ecstatic, 
and,  saying  "Our  Father"  and  "Go  ye,  therefore,  and 
teach  all  nations,"  utters  the  words  which  close  forever 
the  tribal  eras.  Mankind  has  reached  a  growth  where  the 
greatest  states  are  but  its  parishes  and  imperial  affairs 
are  only  local  option  and  home  rule.  It  has  reached  a 
growth  with  which  none  of  the  existing  religions  are 
co-extensive.  That  Mahommedans,  Christians,  Jews, 
Buddhists,  Confucians,  Africans,  rich  and  poor,  learned 
and  illiterate,  are  now  members  of  one  another  in  a 
practical,  existent,  co-operating,  though  still  unconscious, 
social  coalescence  is  a  fact.  The  other  fact,  mate  of  this, 
is  that  this  coalescence  is  becoming  known  to  its  members, 
and  is  demanding  to  be  expressed  to  them  with  appro- 
priate words,  and  to  be  provided  with  appropriate  social 
forms  for  further  progress.  These  people  might  have 
waited  until  they  had  all  become  members  of  one  creed 
before  they  united,  but  they  did  not  wait.  While  the 
proselytisers  were  working  in  the  field,  each  sure  that 
the  harvest  was  for  his  sectarian  sickle,  a  different  growth 
had  ripened.  Quite  another  and  greater  communion 
had  taken  place,  and  all  the  peoples  had  broken  bread 
with  each  other.  Thus  have  the  working  people  of  all 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  79 

countries  come  together  in  a  new  relation;  thus  have 
they  established  the  new  fact  of  a  social  union ;  thus  laid 
the  foundation  of  the  new  religion.  This  new  religion  is 
so  far  along  that  it  is  almost  ready  to  be  named.  The 
fact  of  international  commerce,  international  law,  inter- 
national friendliness,  as  to  the  immigrant,  the  traveler, 
is  not  new.  But  the  recognition  of  the  moral  relations 
between  men  as  men  which  underlie  and  make  possible 
these  relations  is  new. 

The  momentary  pause  in  the  Labour,  Co-operative, 
Socialist,  New  Party  and  similar  movements,  the  religious 
colour  the  unrest  of  the  people  is  taking  on,  show  that 
mankind  is  groping  for  a  new  basis  of  union.  That 
which  makes  the  labour  movement  of  America  seem 
more  difficult  than  that  of  any  other  country,  the  clash  of 
sects,  nationalities,  sections,  languages,  creeds,  all  to 
be  played  against  each  other,  is  in  truth  the  guarantee 
that  this  country  will  reach  the  highest  because  the 
broadest  solution.  America  can  solve  the  labour  ques- 
tion only  on  the  basis  of  simple  humanity — all  for  all. 
The  labour  movement  is  most  promising  in  America, 
because  here  it  has  the  greatest  difficulties  to  overcome. 
The  American  labour  movement  is  drawn  on  by  its 
destiny  to  find  no  resting  place  until  its  democracy 
recognises  the  industrial  liberty,  fraternity,  equality, 
of  men  and  women  of  all  births,  native  and  foreign,  rich 
and  poor;  of  all  colours,  white  and  red,  black  and  yellow; 
and  of  all  occupations,  manual  and  mental,  skilled  and 
unskilled.  Let  there  be  one  outcast,  one  Samson,  prisoner, 
holding  to  the  pillars  of  our  temple,  and  we  are  undone. 
We  leave  the  blacks  unprotected  in  the  South  only  to 
see  them  brought  North  to  take  our  places  in  the  mines 
and  mills.  Its  foundation  is  not  sentiment  but  science. 
It  has  grasped  the  scientific  fact,  the  bottom  principle  of 


8o  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

all  true  science  of  society,  that  the  rule  of  religion  that 
men  are  to  live  for  each  other  is  as  a  cold  political  fact 
the  rule  by  which,  and  by  which  only,  men  are  holding 
together  in  family,  church,  club,  government.  One 
vote  for  each,  all  taxed  that  all  may  have  education, 
free  speech,  peace  from  riot  within  and  invasion  without 
— these  are  the  literal,  practical,  every-day  actual  appli- 
cations of  the  law  of  sacrifice  and  the  Golden  Rule  in 
human  life.  These  are  the  greatest  scientific  facts  of 
sociology.  It  is  as  a  law  of  science  not  sentiment,  as 
a  social  fact  tested  by  the  experience  of  ages,  that  they 
mean  to  write  the  Golden  Rule — of  all  living  for  all — into 
the  political  economy  of  supply  and  demand,  all  supplying 
what  all  demand.  The  doctrine  of  the  Declaration  of 
Independence,  that  no  government  is  just  to  which  the 
people  do  not  consent,  has  been  approved  by  thousands 
of  years  of  republican  life.  The  labour  movement  holds 
that  this  law  of  consent  is  the  law  of  all  life  together, 
and  it  will  never  rest  until  it  has  made  it  the  law  of  in- 
dustrial life  and  has  seen  all  the  workingmen  freed 
forever  from  all  compulsion,  whether  of  starvation  or 
grosser  forms  of  violence.  We  are  forced  to  provide 
for  the  fraternity  of  all.  America  first  of  all  nations  will 
put  the  religion  of  humanity  into  practice  in  the  province 
of  labour,  as  it  was  the  first  to  make  it  the  state  religion  in 
the  province  of  politics  by  the  creation  of  universal 
suffrage.  The  instinct  with  which  the  people  rose  to 
preserve  the  unity  of  the  nation  in  1861  was  more  than 
instinct.  It  was  an  intuition  of  the  greatest  truth  of 
social  science,  that  for  the  love  of  man  for  man  contact 
is  all  that  is  necessary.  So  generous  is  the  flow  that 
even  through  forced  contact  men  can  be  brought  to  love 
each  other.  Many  fear  this  country  is  entering  an 
epoch  of  industrial  and  social  disorder,  in  which  it  can 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  81 

he  held  together  only  on  the  level  of  the  avarice  of  a  few 
and  only  by  the  cement  made  of  the  ashes  of  gunpowder. 
This  may  be  true.  It  is  a  hard  saying,  but  if  this  is 
true  it  is  true  that  those  who  do  so  hold  the  country  to- 
gether will  be  doing  it  a  greater  service  than  those  who 
in  the  name  of  higher  ideals  would  pull  it  apart. 

The  explorations  of  our  moral  geography  are  always 
carried  on  by  those  who  can  go  forth  alone  to  find  new 
ways.  This  is  the  law  of  social  science,  and  when  once 
understood  it  will  put  an  end  to  the  cheap  aspersions  of 
the  Church  for  always  being  in  the  rear  of  the  reformers. 
The  Church  as  an  organisation  cannot  lead  reform; 
no  organisation  can  do  so.  Organisation  and  reformation 
are  two  antagonistic  facts.  Labour  is  the  universal 
religion.  It  is  the  living  of  the  life  of  creation,  service, 
redemption.  It  has  its  moments  of  aspiring  exaltation, 
its  hours  of  prayer,  revelation,  consecration.  But  not 
less  religious  are  the  daily  recurring  hours  of  drudgery 
and  routine.  Love  is  the  force,  work  the  manifestation. 
It  is  only  in  the  development  of  the  common  life  that  the 
individual  life  reaches  its  fuller  expression.  What  the 
world  does  for  us  is  of  far  more  value  to  us  than  all  we 
can  do  for  ourselves.  To  work  is  to  believe.  The  true 
believers  are  the  true  workers.  All  who  have  faith  and 
work,  who  take  part,  whether  grand  or  humble,  in  the  task 
of  that  creation  which  must  be  renewed  with  every  hour 
and  every  season — all  these  make  up  the  true  communion 
of  the  righteous.  He  who  adventures  in  the  fields  the 
sacrifice  of  his  strength  that  men  may  have  their  grain 
is  thereby  one  of  the  elect.  The  smith  who  beats  the 
ploughshare  into  shape,  the  genius  whose  invention 
makes  it  possible  to  have  a  thousand  ploughshares  where 
there  was  one,  the  cook,  the  nurse,  the  poet — all  are  of 
this  communion.  This  is  the  Church  where  the  saved  are 


82  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  saviours.  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them.  He 
that  doeth  the  will,  he  shall  know  the  doctrine.  The  best 
of  orthodoxy  here  is  whether  the  work  be  for  the  good  of 
the  people.  The  hum  of  industry  is  the  hymn  of  praise. 
Every  good  recipe  is  a  sermon.  Every  effort  to  do  a 
good  thing  better  is  a  prayer,  and  progress  is  the  answer 
to  the  prayers.  The  recorded  memories  of  their  thousands 
of  years  of  experience  have  at  last  fastened  in  man  the 
secure  confidence  that  these  prayers  will  be  answered. 
They  know  now  that  their  destiny  is  progress. 

This  is  the  Church  universal,  where  all  who  are  workers 
are  worshippers,  and  where  the  redeemed  are  the  re- 
deemers. There  is  the  Temple  of  the  Fatherhood  which 
will  give  all  men  the  chance  to  be  brothers — the  father- 
hood of  man  by  man.  And  coming  up  into  the  eyes  of 
men  through  the  eyes  of  their  best  and  first  seers  is  the 
vision  that  a  great  primal  force,  as  real  as  that  which 
pulls  the  planets  along,  is  at  work  here.  Little  under- 
stood as  yet,  it  has  been  so  weaving  them  together  in  the 
web  of  world  industry  that  men  serving  each  other 
around  the  globe  show  themselves  to  be  one  with  the 
spirit  which  could  proclaim  its  divinity  in  no  words 
stronger  than  "I  come  among  you  as  one  who  serves." 
This  mighty  stream  of  flowing  energy  weaves  together 
the  works  of  men  that  it  may  weave  together  the  workers. 
In  this  congregation  is  love  to  be  made  manifest. 

It  is  a  waste  of  time  to  talk  pessimism,  degeneration, 
to  a  century  which  has  walked  with  Darwin  and  has  seen 
congresses  of  International  Arbitration,  and  has  been  a 
participant  in  such  a  social  function  as  the  election  by 
universal  suffrage,  white  and  black,  of  a  four-years'  king 
from  among  the  people — acts  of  civilisation  never  before 
possible.  The  age  that  has  seen  these  things  knows  also 
that  it  sees  in  them  the  precedents  by  which  it  will  pacify 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  83 

the  tumults,  civil  wars  and  tyrannies  arising  between 
the  economic  strong  and  the  economic  weak,  the  economic 
cruel  and  the  economic  tender,  the  economic  lawless  and 
the  economic  law-abiding,  the  classes  between  whom 
rage  the  civil  discords  and  violences  peculiar  to  our  times. 
Property  is  now  a  stumbling  block  to  the  people  just  as 
government  has  been.  Property  will  not  be  abolished, 
but  like  government  will  be  democratised. 

The  philosophy  of  self-interest  as  the  social  solution 
was  a  good  living  and  working  synthesis  in  the  days  when 
civilisation  was  advancing  its  frontiers  twenty  miles  a 
day  across  the  American  continent,  and  every  man  for 
himself  was  the  best  social  mobilisation  possible. 

But  to-day  it  is  a  belated  ghost  that  has  overstayed 
the  cock-crow.  These  were  frontier  morals.  But  this 
same,  everyone  for  himself,  becomes  most  immoral 
when  the  frontier  is  abolished  and  the  pioneer  becomes 
the  fellow-citizen,  and  these  frontier  morals  are  most  un- 
economic when  labour  can  be  divided  and  the  product 
multiplied.  Most  uneconomic,  for  they  make  closure  the 
rule  of  industry,  leading  not  to  wealth  but  to  that  awful 
waste  of  wealth  which  is  made  visible  to  every  eye  in  our 
unemployed — not  hands  alone,  but  land,  machinery  and, 
most  of  all,  hearts.  Those  who  still  practise  these 
frontier  morals  are  like  criminals  who,  according  to  the 
new  science  of  penalogy,  are  simply  reappearances  of  old 
types.  Their  acquisitiveness,  once  divine  like  Mercury's, 
is  now  out  of  place  except  in  jail.  Because  out  of  place 
they  are  a  danger.  A  sorry  day  it  is  likely  to  be  for 
those  who  are  found  in  the  way  when  the  new  people 
rise  to  rush  into  each  other's  arms,  to  get  together,  to 
stay  together,  and  to  live  together.  The  labour  move- 
ment halts  because  so  many  of  its  rank  and  file — and  all 
its  leaders — do  not  see  clearly  the  golden  thread  of  love 


84  MAN'  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

on  wmch  have  been  strung  together  all  the  past  glories 
of  human  association,  and  which  is  to  serve  for  the  link 
of  the  new  Association  of  Friends  Who  Labour,  whose 
motto  is  All  for  All.     For  this  Association  machinery 
is  ready  to  do  what  slaves  did  for  the  few  thousand  free- 
men of  Athens.     The  leisure  which  gave  the  opportunity 
for  the   glories   of  Athenians,   health,    beauty,    valour, 
wit,  its  freemen  drew  from  the  labours  of  their  hundreds 
of  thousands  of  slaves.     But  leisure  with  all  its  fruits  is 
made  possible  to  all  of  us  by  the  unsuffering  labours  of 
machinery  which  can  put  fifty  helpers  at  the  side  of 
every  one  of  us — helpers  with  no  back  to  ache,  no  hearts 
to  break.     The  demands  for  Eight  Hours,  Anti-Truck 
Store,  Child  Labour,   Factory  Inspection,   Tax  Reform 
laws,  are  but  broken  bits  of  the  prism  of  reform.     What 
is   the   whole?     Ethically,    that   where   wealth,    leisure, 
power,  freedom,  beauty,  joy,  are  produced  by  the  labours 
of  all,  all  shall  have  joy,  beauty,  freedom,  power,  leisure 
and  wealth;  economically,  that  all  can  have  them,  the 
means  are  so  abundant;  and  politically,  that  all  shall 
have  a  voice  as  well  as  a  share.     Earth  is  rich,  man  is 
good,  love  is  the  law.     What  the  ants,  the  bees  and 
the  beavers  do  ought  to  be  the  minimum  for  man  to 
begin  with.     This  is  the  idea  that  shines  with  the  light 
of  truth,   this  the  inspiring  belief,   this  the  school  of 
thought  which  is  to  beat  down  those  Castles  of  Despair 
beyond  the  reach  of  the  "hammer  of  restrictive  laws." 
For  the  new  glory  and  wealth  now  forming  we  do  not 
need  to  look  into  the  visions  of  the  prophets.     They  can 
be  read  in  the  hard  facts  of  our  political,   economic, 
statistical  pages,  incontestable  even  by  the  least  senti- 
mental.    The  lowering  of  the  rate  of  interest  and  of  the 
death  rates,  the  increase  in  longevity  and  literacy,  the 
universalisation   of  suffrage   and   the  common   schools, 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  85 

recalling  a  too  civilised  race  through  its  children  to  the 
dignity  of  labour,  the  renaissance  of  the  ideals  of  common- 
wealth in  the  municipalisations  and  nationalisations, 
which  make  light,  heat,  power,  parks,  means  of  travel, 
health,  common  property,  the  suburban  expansion  which 
is  carrying  back  to  country  life  the  cities  which  had 
grown  away  from  country  air  and  country  virtue,  the 
substitution  of  machinery  for  slaves,  chattel  or  wage, 
international  law,  the  voluntary,  private  co-operations 
and  co-operative  communities  here  and  in  Europe, 
South  America,  Africa,  heralding  the  universal  Co- 
operative Commonwealth — these  are  some  of  the  facts. 
The  police  are  so  new  an  institution  that  they  are 
called  Peelers  in  London,  after  Sir  Robert  Peel,  who 
passed  the  bill  that  brought  them  into  existence.  The 
argument  that  supported  this  protection  against  physical 
assault  and  street  robberies  is  now  expanding  into  the 
demand  of  the  labour  movement  for  a  police  which 
shall  shelter  the  people  against  financial  violence  and 
wholesale  larceny  in  the  name  of  trade  and  commerce. 
The  agitation  for  this  new  police  the  conservatives  meet 
with  their  prescription  of  "Self  Help."  We  cannot  say 
too  much  for  self  help  unless  we  exalt  it  above  each-other 
help;  the  two  make  one  truth.  To  use  their  common 
resources  to  prevent  adulterations;  monopolies,  to  give 
every  child  education,  to  give  every  member  the  right  of 
employment,  the  right  to  life,  is  the  self  help  and  each- 
other  help  of  men  acting  together.  The  social  movement 
does  not  seek  to  cause  people  to  be  like  each  other. 
One  of  the  great  creative  acts  of  society  is  its  opening  the 
path  for  the  emergence  of  the  individual.  To  stimulate 
each  one  to  be  his  utmost,  to  make  each  as  unlike  all 
others  as  possible,  is  the  work  of  society.  The  peace  under 
which  this  may  be  done  comes  only  by  the  creation  of 


86  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  institutions  which  permit  all  to  develop  free  from 
belligerent  selfishness,  and  which  unite  in  common 
action  powers  which,  separated,  would,  like  monopolies, 
produce  social  war  and  oppression.  Self  help  is  possible 
only  through  equality  of  opportunity.  This  is  the  aim 
of  the  labour  movement,  not  equality  of  performance 
nor  equality  of  possession.  Nothing  has  done  more  for 
"individuality,"  "self  help,"  in  the  political  development 
of  men  than  the  democratic  system  by  which  all  give 
each  other  an  equal  vote  and  an  equal  chance  for  the 
Presidency.  Aristocratic,  monarchic  and  servile  castes 
denying  individuality  are  broken  up,  and  the  merchant's 
son,  Gladstone,  and  the  tanner,  Grant,  rise  from  among 
the  people  to  seats  of  supreme  power  among  the  world's 
rulers.  This  democratic  system  was  resisted,  and  is 
still  resisted  among  the  politically  backward  peoples, 
like  most  of  the  nations  of  Continental  Europe,  on  the 
ground  that  it  is  "levelling."  It  levels  barriers  to  the 
free  evolution  in  each  citizen  of  his  political  aptitude. 
It  puts  an  end  to  the  levels  on  which  the  old  political 
castes  have  kept  the  people.  It  aims  to  fix  a  level  below 
which  none  of  the  people  shall  fall.  They  may  go  as 
high  as  it  is  in  them  to  go.  Austria,  Germany,  Spain, 
Italy,  Russia  may  have  Lincolns  or  Grants  growing  mute 
in  the  bosom  of  the  people,  but  they  and  the  people 
must  remain  unknown  and  unserved  by  each  other. 
Under  their  institutions  the  expanding  energies  of  the 
general  life  are  shut  out  of  the  political  life  unless  they 
will  break  into  it  by  the  overflow  of  revolution. 

Like  republicanism,  the  labour  movement's  level 
would  be  one  from  which  the  people  could  go  up  to 
any  height  within  their  powers.  It  is  a  telltale  incon- 
sistency that  the  very  class  which  insists  that  Self  Help, 
Personal  Regeneration,  Individualism  are  the  only  pan- 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  87 

acea  we  need  are  also  the  least  tolerant  of  new  reforms 
or  new  opinions.  These  variations  in  opinion  and  in 
action  are  pre-eminently  the  manifestations  of  the  very 
Individualism,  Self  Help,  they  profess  to  worship. 
There  never  was  greater  individualism  than  Garrison's, 
Lincoln's,  Wilberforce's ;  never  a  clearer  case  of  Self 
Help  than  to-day's  efforts  of  the  people  to  rise  to  a  higher 
social  and  industrial  life. 

The  task  set  for  love  for  to-day  is  as  clear  and  concrete 
as  that  of  any  previous  moment  of  social  creation.  It  is 
determined  by  the  new  circumstances  of  our  time,  which 
are  incontestably  the  new  wealth  and  the  new  multitudes 
it  has  brought  together.  The  history  of  love  is  the  clue 
to  follow  if  we  would  understand  the  earthquaking 
power  with  which  men  are  moving  toward  each  other  to 
establish  peace,  happiness  and  prosperity  in  the  now 
desolated  fields  of  the  new  Industry.  Poverty  is  to  be 
abolished,  and  with  it  the  crime  and  disease  caused  by 
poverty.  Every  man  is  to  be  made  a  master— the 
master  of  all  because  he  and  all  serve  all.  More  wealth 
than  has  ever  been  known  is  to  be  created  out  of  the 
manhood  and  earth  now  waste.  The  rewards  of  the 
leaders  as  well  as  the  people  are  to  be  made  indefinitely 
greater  than  now.  The  dependence  of  individuals  or 
communities  on  the  will  or  greed  of  others  is  to  be  brought 
to  an  end.  Admitting  all  that  is  claimed  for  the  Captains 
of  Industry  and  for  Capitalists,  chosen  by  competition 
and  inheritance,  as  functionaries  of  the  organisation, 
pioneering,  superintendence,  conservation,  of  the  re- 
sources of  man  and  nature,  still  mankind  has  within 
itself  the  power  of  finding  elective  leaders  still  better. 
All  are  to  be  wealthy,  all  educated,  all  to  have  leisure 
and  holidays,  all  to  have  a  share  in  the  right  of  managing 
the  common  wealth  and  common  industry. 


88  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

This  does  not  mean  that  all  industry  is  to  be  common 
and  all  homes  and  pocketbooks  owned  in  common,  any 
more  than  that  it  means  Plato's  scheme  of  all  wives  in 
common.  But  when  any  industry  has  become,  in  fact, 
a  common  field  of  effort,  the  people  are  to  exercise  a 
new  right  by  applying  to  it  the  morals  and  the  forms  of 
the  common  welfare.  This  is  the  creed  of  the  future,  for 
it  is  positive,  constructive,  creative.  It  is  the  gospel 
of  glad  tidings,  not  of  despair;  of  optimism,  not  of  pessim- 
ism; of  regeneration,  not  of  degeneration.  It  does  not 
believe  that  men  are  bad  and  the  Republic  a  failure. 
Its  outlook  is  that  mankind  has  about  finished  its  ap- 
prenticeship in  learning  the  art  of  living  together,  and  is 
about  to  give  the  art  a  new  application  in  the  widest 
field  of  all  association — industry,  with  a  religion,  a 
patriotism  and  a  political  economy  to  suit.  All  human 
association  has  been  a  success,  and  each  experiment  has 
done  more  good  than  harm.  Each  has  been  a  stepping 
stone  to  something  better. 

When  the  smoke  in  which  Bonaparte  wrapped  himself 
has  blown  away  we  see  that  he  destroyed  the  first  French 
Republic  only  to  make  more  perfect  the  solidification  of 
France  for  the  present  Republic.  He  broke  up  the 
German  unity  of  centuries  and  consolidated  its  hundred 
great  and  small  principalities  only  as  the  unconscious 
agent  of  the  social  will  in  clearing  the  ground  for  the 
united  Germany  of  our  day. 

The  factory  has  been  an  advance  on  the  cottage,  the 
corporation  an  advance  on  the  individual,  the  combination 
of  corporations  an  advance  on  the  corporation,  and  the 
combination  of  all  the  citizens  and  all  the  corporations  in 
the  greatest  citizen  and  the  greatest  corporation  of  all — 
the  whole  people — will  be  the  longest  step  forward  of  all. 
Those  who  have  eyes  to  see  can  behold  society  busily  at 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  89 

work  to-day  on  this  new  unification.  Witness  all  our 
municipalisations,  co-operative  stores,  communities,  na- 
tionalisations, social  settlements,  the  living  wage,  arbitra- 
tions, labour  laws,  government  contracting,  our  Children's 
Aid  Societies,  charities,  labour  colonies,  industrial  com- 
binations pioneering  the  people,  the  universal  preoccupa- 
tion of  our  literature,  grave  and  gay,  with  these  themes. 
The  great  work  now  to  be  done  in  the  science  of  society  is 
to  gather  into  one  great  generalisation  all  the  facts  of 
the  past  institutionalisation  of  love  in  human  affairs,  and 
to  add  to  this  a  catalogue  of  the  budding  germs — the  co- 
operations, private  and  public,  the  arbitrations,  the 
international  labour  conferences,  the  sympathetic  strikes, 
which  prefigure  as  guide-post  facts,  like  the  world-wide 
sale  of  "Looking  Backward"  and  "Merrie  England,"  the 
new  institutionalisations  by  which  Humanity  is  now 
visibly  at  work  on  a  new  Incarnation. 

The  Geneva  arbitration  between  Great  Britain  and  the 
United  States,  the  plans  of  Karl  Marx  for  the  international 
organisation  of  the  workingmen,  Tennyson's  vision,  are 
all  variations  of  one  thought — the  union  of  men.  The 
international  bill  of  exchange  was  an  earlier  variation 
of  the  same  thought  of  union.  That  was  a  variation  of 
the  idea  of  trade,  and  trade,  we  learn  of  all  the  political 
economists,  was  a  variation  of  piracy.  Sensational  as 
the  statement  may  sound  at  first,  the  international  com- 
monwealth when  it  comes  will  have  for  its  foundation 
the  same  fact  as  the  robberies  and  murders  in  which 
primitive  men  carried  on  their  international  inter- 
course— the  fact,  namely,  that  our  fellow  man  has  some- 
thing we  want.  On  this  thread  of  reciprocal  need  has 
been  strung  all  social  institutions. 

Our  generation  is  visibly  about  to  attempt  to  get  for 
itself  the  heaven  of  a  new  peace — peace  from  the  slaught- 


9o  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

ers,  the  famines,  the  hatreds  of  industrial  war;  another 
instalment  of  the  universal  peace  which  Jesus  and  Dante 
and  Kant  and  all  the  great  friends  of  men  have  told 
them  to  make  for  themselves — another  circle  of  heavenly 
independence,  joy,  love  and  wealth. 

Never  was  there  so  much  good-will  in  the  world  as 
now.  We  have  not  yet  had  time  to  apprehend  the  mean- 
ing of  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  in  Russia  and  the  abol- 
ition of  slavery  in  the  United  States.  The  task  of  twenty- 
five  hundred  years  is  almost  completed.  Mankind  has 
not  waited  to  finish  this  work  before  getting  well  under 
way  its  logical  successors,  the  abolition  of  war  and  the 
abolition  of  poverty.  They  who  scoff  at  the  feasibility 
of  these  next  steps  are  no  more  prophets  than  their 
prototypes  who  all  through  the  twenty-five  centuries 
now  closing  kept  defending  the  institution  of  slavery, 
and  denying  with  the  infallibility  of  "practical  men" 
the  possibility  of  ending  it  or  getting  along  without  it. 
The  first  manumission  of  a  slave  was  the  beginning  of 
the  abolition  of  slavery.  The  passage  of  the  Poor  Laws 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  proved  that  the  idea  of  having  the 
poor  always  with  us  was  already  dead.  Our  plans  of 
labour  colonies,  of  employment  for  the  unemployed,  of 
child  rescue,  contain  somewhere  in  their  manifold  forms 
the  rudiments  of  the  institutions  which  will  at  last  put 
poverty  into  the  Museum  of  Antiquities.  This  evil  must 
assuredly  be  near  its  exit  when  Professors  of  Political 
Economy,  as  Professor  Marshall  of  Oxford,  discuss  its 
abolition  in  their  textbooks.  Poverty,  monarchy,  war, 
will  not  be  as  long  in  the  passing  as  slavery  was. 

The  energy  that  was  engaged  in  the  contest  with 
slavery  is  now  released,  and  is  mobilised  with  the  accumu- 
lating forces  released  by  all  the  other  emancipations 
going  on  to  the  next  work.  Exactly  in  proportion  to 


NEW  FORMS   OF  SOCIAL   LIFE  91 

the  gain  the  ocean  telegraph,  the  steamer,  the  diffusion 
of  English,  the  Postal  Union,  the  Press,  Universal  Suffrage 
gives  us  in  the  speed  of  exchanging  ideas  and  inspirations 
and  joining  forces  will  be  our  gain  in  the  speed  of  reform. 
Evolution  teaches  that  its  later  stages  move  more  rapidly 
than  the  earlier. 

It  begins  to  be  seen  that  the  social  problem  is  too 
big  to  be  debated  or  settled  in  terms  of  any  class  move- 
ment. If  anyone  supposed  that  the  question  of  freedom 
for  the  Negroes  was  the  Negroes'  question,  he  was  un- 
deceived by  the  days  from  1861  to  1865,  when  America, 
like  Egypt,  had  hardly  a  house  where  there  was  not  one 
dead.  No  one  now  so  dull  as  not  to  see  that  the  power 
of  wealth  over  production,  prices,  markets,  livelihoods, 
courts,  legislatures,  government,  church,  education,  so- 
ciety, the  press,  is  not  the  workingmen's  question. 
They  protested  first,  because  pinched  first  and  worst,  as 
economically  the  weakest.  Now  we  are  all  beginning  to 
feel  the  peine  forte  et  dure  with  which  the  plutocracy 
presses  its  victims  to  death  in  imitation  of  mediaeval 
torture.  The  programme  to  work  by  must  be  for  all. 
The  world,  too,  has  outgrown  the  dialect  and  temper 
of  hatred.  The  style  of  imprecatory  psalms  and  the 
denunciating  prophets  is  out  of  date.  No  one  knows 
these  times  if  he  is  not  conscious  of  this  change.  The 
softening  of  temper  which  has  put  an  end  to  the  whipping 
of  wives,  and  is  banishing  the  whipping  of  children  at 
home  or  school,  and  instinctively  ranges  any  company, 
public  or  private,  against  the  man  who  shows  anger,  is 
a  sign  of  a  universal  access  of  amiability.  Social  reformers 
must  defer  to  the  feeling  that  men  are  largely  as  they 
have  been  environed  before  and  after  birth,  and  that 
in  substance  all  are  about  of  the  same  stuff.  The  high 
tone  is  become  unfashionable.  People  feel  that  even 


92  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  oppressor  is  a  victim  of  mistakes  for  which  all  are 
responsible,  and  that  the  task  is  not  to  judge  but  to 
rectify.  The  love  method  is  more  winning,  more  just 
and  more  scientific  than  that  of  hatred.  We  have  lost 
our  powers  of  indignation,  Ruskin  says  with  regret. 
But  that  need  not  be  regretted,  if  one  cause  of  it  be  that 
we  have  passed  through  that  stage — that  necessary  stage 
— and  are  now  at  the  more  important  point  of  moving  to 
the  remedy.  This  demands  other  forms  of  energy  than 
imprecation.  The  old  division  of  men  into  the  eternally 
elect  and  the  eternally  damned  gave  a  bad  precedent 
for  dealing  with  the  socially  evil.  This  theology 
lent  itself  easily  to  the  social  science  by  classifying  the 
oppressors  as  the  naturally  bad  and  the  oppressed  as 
the  naturally  good,  and  the  logical  solution  was — get 
rid  of  the  bad.  Science  and  good-will  have  banished 
this  theory  both  in  its  theological  and  sociological  forms. 
To  put  the  blame  of  social  ills  on  the  plutocracy  alone 
is  ridiculous  The  abjectness  of  the  people  is  as  much 
the  cause  of  despotism  as  the  tyranny  of  the  would-be 
tyrant. 

The  knights  of  the  ethical  tournament  are  not  Sir 
Right  and  Sir  Wrong,  but  Sir  Was  Right  and  Sir  Is 
Right.  All  the  great  controversies  of  history  have  been 
between  that  which  is  "established  and  that  which  is 
right."  The  real  character  of  the  struggle  never  changes, 
but  it  assumes  new  shapes  as  it  passes  into  new  regions 
and  deals  with  new  materials.  Every  revolution  adapts 
its  familiar  quotations  from  the  revolution  before  and 
hands  them  along  to  be  adapted  for  the  next.  There 
is  but  one  phase  for  all  progress,  though  infinite  are  the 
variations.  The  Abolitionists  got  their  fine  words  from 
Rousseau  and  Jefferson,  and  our  advocates  of  a  new 
Brotherhood  do  but  revamp  the  same  words  of  humanity 


NEW  FORMS  OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  93 

In  which  all  emancipations  have  spoken,  back  to  Christ 
and  before.  A  new  inequality  or,  better,  the  perception 
of  a  new  field  for  equality,  calls  us  to  review  all  our  past 
achievements  of  equality,  and  to  learn  to  apply  the  old 
principles,  eternal,  to  the  new  circumstances.  All  the 
old  masters,  Plato,  Aristotle,  the  reformers,  Luther, 
Calvin,  More,  the  American  Fathers,  are  made  up  to  date 
by  this  new  crisis.  To  read  them  into  authority  in  our 
present  problem  we  have  but  to  substitute  new  names 
of  things  for  the  old  ones — competition  for  anarchy; 
poverty  for  the  extermination  of  the  conquered,  the 
vae  metis;  strikes  for  internecine  war;  capitalist  for 
priest  or  tyrant;  workingmen  and  farmers  for  slaves; 
socialists,  anarchists,  for  heretics;  business  for  conquest; 
and  so  on.  "The  intercourse  is  old  but  the  scale  is  new." 
The  new  scale  of  modern  wealth-making  also  brings  all 
the  old  passions  up  to  date.  Envy,  hate,  greed,  anger, 
fear,  cruelty,  tyranny — all  the  old  mean,  selfish  and 
murderous  passions  are  waked  again.  They  had  been 
put  to  sleep  more  or  less  soundly  within  the  charmed 
circles  of  the  old  pacifications  of  brotherhood,  husband- 
hood,  fatherhood,  clanship,  church  communion,  free 
masonry,  the  trades-union,  citizenship.  But  the  new 
power,  the  new  temptation,  the  new  immunity  of  the 
new  world  of  wealth  where  men  and  women  and  children 
have  been  thrown  together  pell  mell,  have  waked  the 
sleeping  furies.  In  this  new  crowd  the  restraints  of  the 
home  spirit  and  the  community  spirit  are  thrown  off. 
All  are  strangers.  Everyone  is  to  take  what  he  can  get. 
The  motto  is  Laissez  Faire,  Laissez  Aller.  Do  what 
you  will.  Go  where  you  will.  It  is  a  whole  world  plunged 
into  opportunities  of  secret  sin,  two  hemispheres  full 
of  countrymen,  alone,  rich,  in  Paris,  or  European  "ex- 
plorers" with  Maxims  and  whiskey  alone  with  lust  of 


94  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

power  and  pleasure  amid  the  unsophisticated  black  men 
and  women  of  some  African  valley.  What  the  devil 
whispers  to  these  would-be  Fausts  on  the  Avenue  de 
1'Opera  or  in  Matatebeleland,  our  political  economists 
preach  in  open  print  to  the  breathless  gold  seekers  in  our 
new  wildernesses  of  Business.  Do  what  you  will.  Go 
where  you  will.  We  thought  we  were  a  civilisation,  but 
here  are  the  seven  devils  at  work  again  seeking  to  drive 
us  into  the  sea.  And  our  new  indulgence  in  the  old 
vices  is  unsettling  the  virtues  we  felt  sure  of.  We  see 
the  evil  spirits  creeping  back,  and  ravelling  out  the  ties 
of  family,  church,  state,  society.  Among  the  working- 
men  father,  mother,  children,  must  be  competitors;  the 
father  becomes  a  tramp,  the  home  falls  apart.  And 
among  the  rich,  how  money  alienates  brother  and  sister, 
divorces  husband  and  wife. 

The  people  are  surfeited  with  criticisms  of  evils ;  they 
are  surfeited  with  Utopias.  The  only  questions  they 
care  for  are :  What  can  we  do?  How  can  we  change  to  a 
better  system?  How  can  we  create  the  instruments  of 
the  new  order?  We  have  the  instruments  at  hand  if  we 
will  but  use  them.  We  no  more  need  a  destruction  of 
existing  institutions  and  the  creation  of  new  ones  than 
we  need  a  new  body  of  social  principles.  Our  religion  of 
Fatherhood  and  Brotherhood,  our  political  economy  of 
the  exchange  of  equal  service  and  of  supply  for  demand, 
our  law  of  equal  rights  and  of  the  common  welfare,  our 
property  of  stewardship — these  we  have  had  for  thousands 
of  years.  All  our  social  institutions  are  attempts  to 
incarnate  these  principles.  Very  imperfect  the  incarna- 
tions have  been.  They  have  had  to  be  subject  to  the 
perpetual  necessity  of  compromising  with  the  greed  and 
strength  of  the  strong,  the  ignorance  and  weakness  of  the 
weak.  But  they  have  been  progressive.  So  far  human 


NEW  FORMS    OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  95 

history  has  been  a  history  of  progress.  We  know  that 
other  issues  are  possible  in  evolution,  for  we  see  atavism, 
degeneracy  and  atrophy  all  through  nature.  But  there 
is  reason  to  believe — evolutionary  reason — that  progress 
is  still  our  destiny  for  an  indefinite  future  in  our  present 
sphere.  We  are  therefore  able  to  hope  and  believe  that 
we  shall  continue  our  progressive  application  of  these 
fundamental  principles,  and  that  our  future  institutions 
as  well  as  our  future  principles  will  be  but  developments 
of  those  we  have  and  have  had.  The  King  and  the 
President  are  both  representative  institutions,  but  with 
a  variation  in  the  method  of  selecting  the  representative. 
If  we  lived  up  to  but  one  of  these  principles,  if  we  made 
what  it  ought  to  be  but  one  of  our  institutions — the 
school,  or  the  municipality,  or  the  court  of  justice — we 
would  solve  the  whole  problem.  All  the  rest  would  have 
to  change  with  the  perfected  one.  The  greatest  social 
instrument  at  hand  to  use  in  developing  society  is  the 
government.  Even  as  it  exists  now  it  has  an  abundance 
of  power  for  the  most  advanced  social  reconstruction. 
The  postoffice,  for  instance,  is  already  used,  in  one 
country  or  another,  as  an  express  carrier,  a  savings 
bank,  an  insurance  agency  and  a  telegraph  company. 
It  would  need  but  a  slight  expansion — a  change  in  size, 
with  no  change  in  fundamental  parts — to  become  also  a 
carrier  in  freight  and  passengers.  The  court  which  can 
operate  bankrupt  railroads  through  receivers  could  also 
so  operate  the  mines,  or  the  refineries  or  the  factories, 
or  the  mills,  of  the  monopolies  which  the  courts  have 
found  to  be  forfeit  under  the  anti-monopoly  laws.  The 
evolution  of  the  municipality  shows  it  capable  of  being 
a  universal  provider.  There  should  be  somewhere  a 
model  town  which  did  everything  that  any  other  town 
did,  combining  in  itself  all  their  efficiencies  as  a  composite 


96  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

photograph  unites  all  the  features  of  the  prevalent  face 
in  a  class  or  a  community. 

Liberty,  fraternity,  equality,  are  words  of  an  ideal 
which  we  are  always  creating  but  which  is  never  created. 
They  are  cries  with  which  the  people  have  been  united 
in  their  resistance  to  inequalities,  unbrotherliness,  tyran- 
nies become  intolerable.  In  these  names  the  Revolution 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century — the  name  mistakenly  nar- 
rowed down  to  the  French  Revolution — was  fought,  but 
it  did  not  attempt  to  install  Liberty,  Fraternity,  Equality 
in  any  department  of  life,  not  even  the  political,  though 
it  was  pre-eminently  a  political  movement.  It  abolished 
many  forms  of  the  opposites;  it  took  several  great  steps 
toward  its  three  ideals.  That  was  all.  It  lifted  France, 
Germany,  America  to  a  higher  level  of  social  efforts,  but 
it  left  in  all  of  them  Tyranny,  Inequality,  Unbrotherliness. 
In  all  of  them  it  is  no  doubt  strictly  accurate  to  say  that 
there  is  to-day  more  general,  more  conscious  and  more 
definite  discontent  than  there  was  before  this  revolution. 
Phenomena  as  full  of  warning  to  the  established  order  as 
the  Social  Democratic  Party  of  Germany,  the  Socialist- 
Communist  movement  in  France,  the  Populist,  Socialist, 
Granger  and  Labour  agitations  in  the  United  States  were 
not  in  sight  in  the  eighteenth  century.  There  were  in 
view  grosser  wrongs,  but  the  characteristic  of  our  day  is 
the  greater  sensitiveness  of  the  people.  This  answers 
to  the  greater  refinement  of  the  methods  of  taking  life 
and  property  without  visible  bloodshed.  In  fact  we 
could  none  of  us,  not  even  the  noblest  or  the  shrewdest, 
tell  to  what  forms  and  felicities  Liberty,  Equality, 
Fraternity  could  develop  ultimately.  But  we  can  tell 
very  practically  and  accurately  that  the  sense  of  right  and 
sympathy  of  which  they  are  the  ideal  expressions  is 
shocked  beyond  endurance  by  the  division  of  the  prod 


NEW  FORMS   OF  SOCIAL  LIFE  97 

ucts  of  the  social  labour  into  West  Ends  and  East 
Ends,  Fifth  Avenues  and  Five  Points,  as  preceding  genera- 
tions were  shocked  into  action  by  the  Chivalry  of  Slavery 
and  its  Uncle  Toms,  and  the  Marquis  and  the  widow 
gathering  nettles  in  the  rain  for  his  rent.  As  we  abolish 
in  succession  the  feudalisms,  slaveries,  properties,  which 
stand  next  before  us  in  our  path,  we  become  conscious, 
too,  of  a  broader,  sweeter,  stronger  air  of  human  com- 
panionship, of  a  better  society. 

The  word  Liberty  is  of  double  entendre.  The  popular 
use  of  Liberty  is  to  do  what  we  will.  This  false  significa- 
tion has  grown  up  around  the  word  because  its  champions 
have  had  to  drag  it  into  rebellions,  protestantisms,  revo- 
lutions. To  have  Liberty  is  to  obey  the  laws  of  life, 
from  animal  to  social.  We  are  free  to  walk  the  earth 
because  never  for  one  instant  does  the  law  of  gravitation 
let  go  its  hold  upon  us.  Liberty  has  acquired  its  colour  of 
self-assertion,  of  resistance,  from  the  temporary  inter- 
ference of  tyrants  with  the  pursuit  by  the  people  of  the 
true  laws  of  social  life.  In  itself  the  essential  idea  of 
liberty  is  positive,  not  negative.  It  does  not  mean 
resistance;  it  means  obedience.  If  we  could  take  the 
accidental  and  factitious  meanings  from  these  three 
words — self-destruction  from  sacrifice,  dead  level  from 
equality,  and  resistance  from  liberty — or  if  new  words 
could  be  found  for  their  finer  significations,  social  reform 
would  go  forward  with  a  great  bound.  The  industrial 
world  with  its  disputants  gathering  to  themselves  guns 
that  fire  ten  shots  a  second  to  arbitrate  the  dispute  as  to 
how  the  common  product  shall  be  divided  would  be  a 
thing  of  the  past.  The  labour  movement  is  the  belief 
that  this  strife  like  all  precedent  strifes  can  be  pacified, 
and  pacified  only  by  the  same  laws  of  love  and  freedom 
which  have  given  us  all  the  forms  of  the  life  together. 


98  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL   CREATOR 

Equality  is  another  beclouded  word.  Poverty  of 
language  has  led  us  to  use  it  for  two  utterly  distinct 
ideas,  sameness  and  reciprocity.  Two  coins  are  equal 
when  they  are  of  the  same  value.  Two  eyes  are  equal 
when  they  are  of  the  same  power.  But  citizens  are  equal 
when  each  gives  all  the  others  the  same  rights  he  asks 
for  himself.  Practical  men  and  philosophers  alike 
deride  equality.  There  is  no  such  thing,  they  say,  and 
life  would  be  intolerable  if  there  were.  The  equality 
they  mean  is  not  the  equality  we  mean.  Equality  is  not 
identity.  That  all  men  cannot  speak  with  equal  effect 
is  no  reason  why  all  should  not  have  the  equal  right  to 
speak  as  well  as  they  can.  That  all  men  cannot  be 
equally  fit  for  President  is  no  reason  why  all  should  not 
have  an  equal  chance  to  fit  themselves.  That  all  men 
are  not  equal  in  their  power  to  get  and  hold  wealth  is  no 
reason  why  all  should  not  have  an  equal  right  to  get  and 
hold  what  they  can.  Equality  of  abilities,  of  possessions, 
there  will  never  be,  but  equality  of  right  to  possess,  to  use 
abilities,  there  must  be.  There  are  vast  properties  in 
which  the  people  are  equal  possessors — the  postomces, 
streets,  parks,  and  the  like.  Enlarge  these  communisms 
to  the  widest  extent,  inequality  of  possession  and  of 
ability  would  still  remain,  and  the  inequality  of  possession 
would  certainly  be  greater  than  it  is  to-day,  and  the 
less  gross  and  material  the  possessions  the  greater  would 
be  the  inequalities.  Every  new  social  co-operation  is 
vast  economy  of  energy,  giving  to  every  individual  a 
saving  of  force  which  he  can  put  to  new  uses  for  himself. 
Our  language  is  a  poor  shift  to  express  our  ideas,  and 
nowhere  is  its  poverty  plainer — and  more  hurtful — than 
in  this  use  of  Equality  in  the  two  totally  different 
meanings  of  reciprocity  and  sameness.  Even  learned 
professors  and  distinguished  literary  men  have  made 
themselves  a  stumbling  block  by  this  confusion  of  terms. 


NEW   FORMS   OF   SOCIAL    LIFE  99 

Men  need  luxury,  splendour,  beauty  and  magnificence- 
palaces,  parks,  galleries,  colour,  music,  refulgence.  They 
will  have  them;  kings  and  aristocracies  are  not  too  high 
a  price  to  pay  for  them  in  their  primitive  days,  but 
civilised  man  must  get  with  them  the  greatest  luxury 
of  all — democratic  self  respect.  Not  to  destroy  luxury, 
but  to  democratise  it  is  the  true  policy. 

There  ought  to  be  pageantry,  splendour,  magnificence, 
luxury,  beauty,  and  a  fill  of  it  in  every  life.  These 
are  possible  to  every  one — to  walk  in  palaces,  parks, 
to  rest  on  velvet,  to  feast  the  eyes  with  the  colours  of 
gems  and  art,  to  taste  the  sweet,  to  caress  the  brain 
with  harmony ;  to  travel  far,  and  mix  with  our  fellow- 
men — but  only  by  co-operations  by  democracy.  And 
while  men  were  too  much  of  the  clod  to  be  democrats 
and  get  these  things  for  themselves  through  the  part- 
nership of  citizens ;  mankind  has  had  its  finer  suscepti- 
bilities saved  for  it  by  the  grandeur  of  its  kings,  popes, 
and  millionaires,  selfish  as  they  may  have  been.  Better 
that  escape — unconsciously — from  the  killing  drudgery 
and  commonplace  of  life  than  no  escape  at  all. 

The  labour  movement  is  a  hope,  a  prayer,  an  inspira- 
tion, a  faith  that  the  multitudes  of  men  thrown  together 
by  modern  industry  will  be  able  to  group  and  to  organise 
themselves  on  the  lines  of  mutual  respect,  equal  justice, 
reciprocal  profit  and  social  love.  The  first  material  need, 
the  cornerstone  of  welfare,  is  the  same  among  workers 
as  among  citizens,  or  tribesmen,  or  families — organised 
love,  as  emotional  as  the  temperament  chooses,  provided 
it  be  at  the  same  time  institutional,  that  is,  in  working 
shape.  This  is  not  the  "philosophy  of  comfort."  It 
teaches  that  there  is  one  thing  more  important  than  to 
have,  that  is,  to  share;  and  it  reads  in  history  that  if 
you  begin  by  not  sharing  you  will  end  by  not  having. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   NEW   CONSCIENCE 

FOUR  hundred  years  before  the  workingman  of  Nazareth 
in  behalf  of  the  toilers  of  the  world  came  to  deliver  his 
message  of  love  and  a  sword,  a  new  conscience  stirred 
some  obscure  heart  in  Greece  to  speak  for  liberty  for  the 
labourer. 

Plato  was  dreaming  of  the  elevation  of  man  through 
impossible  Republics  and  preposterous  stirpiculture,  and 
had  no  ear  for  this  new  voice.  But  Aristotle,  man  of 
science,  knowing  that  the  humblest  of  opinions  may  come 
to  be  the  biggest  of  facts,  puts  it  on  record,  though 
evidently  merely  as  an  eccentricity  of  contemporary 
thought.  "There  are  some,"  he  says,  "who  think  that  it 
is  only  the  fashion  of  despotic  government  which  makes 
one  man  a  slave  and  another  free,  and  that  the  tie  must  be 
unjust  because  it  is  founded  in  force. "  His  was  one  of  the 
greatest  of  minds,  but  it  never  divined  that  in  this  whisper 
of  the  new  conscience  of  a  few  nameless  Greeks  lay  the 
full  diapason  of  a  cry  before  which  would  fall  many  a  wall 
of  citadeled  oppression,  built  on  sand  because  founded  on 
force,  unjust  and  therefore  unsound.  That  still,  small 
voice  rolls  around  the  world,  shaking  the  oppressor  out  of 
his  seat,  whether  king,  priest,  man-stealer  or  monopolist. 
To  the  accompaniment  of  the  guns  of  Fort  Sumter  and  the 
Wilderness  it  sang  the  chorus  of  union  and  liberty,  which 
Lincoln  in  1861  heard  sounding  forth  from  the  mystic 
chords  of  the  American  heart.  Those  unknown  Greeks 
were  the  first  Abolitionists.  Lincoln  signed  only  a  chapter 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  101 

of  the  emancipation  which  they  proclaimed,  and  that  not 
the  last  chapter.  Ceaseless  growth  means  ceaseless 
emancipation.  The  symphony  Lincoln  heard  plays  on. 
One  by  one  the  cries  of  imprisoned  and  imprisoner  blend 
into  the  strains  of  a  widening  freedom. 

It  is  the  fashion  of  scholars  to  speak  of  the  Greek 
intellect,  the  Roman  will,  the  Hebrew  conscience.  The 
Hebrew  had  a  conscience,  not  because  he  was  a  Hebrew 
but  because  he  was  a  man.  The  same  birthright  belongs 
to  the  Greek  and  to  all  of  us.  It  was  the  voice  of  con- 
science, "  that  prophetic  sign  of  my  divine  monitor,"  which 
always  spoke  to  Socrates  when  what  he  was  about  to  do 
would  be  wrong,  and  by  the  same  revelation  God  wrote 
the  Ten  Commandments  on  the  hearts  of  men  before  they 
were  graven  on  the  tables  of  stone. 

Fichte  says  that  the  greater  the  wealth  and  rank  the 
greater  the  vice.  Seldom  does  the  new  conscience,  when 
it  seeks  a  teacher  to  declare  to  men  what  is  is  wrong, 
find  him  in  the  dignitaries  of  the  Church,  the  State,  the 
culture  that  is.  The  higher  the  rank  the  closer  the  tie 
that  binds  those  to  what  is  but  ought  not  to  be.  It  is  the 
tramp,  Jesus,  who  has  not  where  to  lay  his  head,  the 
peasant  Luther,  the  poor  mechanic,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  who  are  free  to  listen  to  new  truth,  and  brave 
and  free  to  speak  the  words  that  lead  men  out  of  old 
Church,  and  old  State,  and  old  industry.  The  new  con- 
science which  warns  civilisations  to  do  justice  to  the 
workingmen  has  always  encountered  the  opposition  of  the 
mighty  ones  of  earth.  If  this  spirit  of  love  and  liberty 
stirred  in  the  hearts  of  any  Jews  of  the  old  dispensation, 
their  priests,  unlike  the  scientific  observer  of  Athens,  let 
the  fact  find  no  record  in  their  scriptures.  Aristotle 
declared  that  no  man  could  be  a  workingman  and  lead 
a  life  of  virtue.  In  ancient  times,  learned,  pious,  patriotic, 


io2  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

noble,  all  agreed  that  the  victor  who  had  the  right  to 
kill  had  the  right  to  command,  and  that  he  who  was 
given  his  life  had  no  right  to  demand  his  liberty.  Lawyers 
invented  the  doctrine  that  the  slave  could  not  buy 
his  freedom,  for  the  money  he  proffered  for  it  must  be 
his  master's.  The  early  Christian  Church  did  not  so  much 
disapprove  of  slavery  as  of  the  enslavement  of  its  own 
members.  In  the  United  States  religious  synods  voted 
that  the  slavery  agitation  should  be  suppressed  by  laying 
on  the  table,  unread,  all  petitions,  resolutions  and  other 
papers  about  it,  and  Evangelical  Alliances  forbade  young 
people  to  dance,  but  refused  to  declare  it  sinful  for  a  bishop 
to  hold  slaves.  Boston  hissed  the  fanatic  who  declared 
that  the  theatre  would  receive  the  gospel  of  anti-slavery 
truth  earlier  than  the  churches.  But  in  two  years  slaves 
on  the  stage  in  "Uncle  Tom"  shot  their  hunters  amid 
loud  applause,  while  the  pulpit  remained  silent  or  hostile. 
As  for  property,  its  broadcloth  mobs  attacked  meetings  of 
women  for  proclaiming  the  new  freedom,  dragged  Garrison 
through  the  streets  of  Boston  to  hang  him  for  maintaining 
the  right  of  the  black  workingman  to  fuller  growth, 
and  its  Presidents  and  Supreme  Court  Judges  ran  with 
the  bloodhounds  to  catch  the  fugitive  labourer.  The 
courts  then,  as  now,  made  many  things  successful  which 
they  can  never  make  respectable. 

When  the  subject  of  the  extension  of  slavery  in  the 
territories  was  before  Congress,  a  Southern  member 
arose  and  told  how  he  loved  his  black  "mammy."  He 
had  been  nursed  at  her  breast  with  her  own  black  baby. 
"I  love  that  black  mammy,"  the  Southern  member 
fervently  exclaimed,  "and  when  I  go  into  Nebraska  I 
want  to  take  her  with  me."  "We  do  not  object,"  said 
Ben  Wade,  "  to  your  taking  your  black  mammy  with  you 
to  Nebraska ;  but  we  don't  mean  to  let  you  flog  her  or  sell 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  103 

her  when  you  get  there."  Pro-Slavery  law  and  order 
easily  proved  that  to  buy  and  sell  workingmen  in  the 
market  was  constitutional,  pious,  profitable,  based  on 
contract,  benign.  All  that  the  new  conscience  could  reply 
was:  "Hear  the  whistling  of  that  lash,  that  drip  of 
blood,  the  cries  of  that  mother,  the  cries  of  the  children ; 
see  those  empty  homes,  those  human  faces  twisted  out  of 
shape,  master's  as  well  as  man's." 

It  was  ridiculous,  was  it  not,  to  meet  those  judges  and 
bishops  and  millionaires  and  great  editors  with  this  talk 
about  the  lash,  and  blood,  and  the  sacredness  of  the 
persons  of  working  men  and  working  women?  There 
was  no  argument  in  it,  only  sentiment.  The  gravestones 
of  Arlington  and  Gettysburg  prove  that  sentiment  can 
force  a  hearing. 

There  came  a  day  when  the  black  mammy  could  not  be 
sold  or  flogged,  at  home  or  abroad,  when  families  could 
not  be  torn  asunder  at  the  auction  block,  when  the  great 
brothel  was  closed  where  half  a  million  of  women  were 
flogged  to  prostitution  or,  worse  still,  degraded  to  believe 
it  honourable,  when  a  professedly  Christian  nation  ceased 
to  deny,  by  statute,  the  Bible  to  every  sixth  man  and 
woman  of  its  population.  This  was  what  the  new  con- 
science did  for  the  slaves  with  the  help  of  religion,  but 
against  the  opposition  of  the  Church;  with  the  help  of 
'the  spirit  of  justice,  but  against  the  opposition  of  lawyers, 
judges  and  legislatures ;  with  the  help  of  the  true  science 
of  labour,  but  against  the  efforts  of  the  economists  and 
capitalists.  After  all  is  over,  lawyer,  priest,  professor 
and  money-maker  find  that  they  were  wrong  and  con- 
science right,  that  the  theory  that  treated  men  and 
brothers  as  chattels  or  goods  was  illegal,  unjust,  irreligious, 
uneconomical,  and  wealth-destroying. 

For  twenty-three  hundred  years  the  argument  never 


104  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

reached  a  higher  plane  than  that  attained  by  the  forgotten 
Greeks,  who  held  that  they  were  unnatural  ties  which  were 
founded  on  force.  This  revolt  against  ties  founded  on 
force  finds  another  echo  in  the  'aspirations  and  ideals  of 
those  who  are  to-day  seeking  for  themselves  and  others 
the  right  to  work  in  secure  tenure  of  employment,  to  live  as 
long  a  life  as  their  neighbours  live,  to  live  it  as  freely 
and  to  rear  healthfully  and  happily  children  to  live  after 
them. 

It  was  the  force  of  battle  that  overcame  the  labourer  of 
the  old  re'gime ;  it  is  the  force  of  the  market  that  subdues 
the  labourer  of  to-day.  The  tie  between  the  labourer  and 
the  master  is  still  one  of  force,  although  it  is  not  now  one 
of  visible  chains.  You  say,  "The  labourer  is  free,  he 
consents."  Yes,  free  as  the  captive  was — to  work  for 
what  he  can  get  or  die.  Like  him  he  consents  to  save  his 
life  or,  more  accurately,  a  part  of  his  life.  The  Con- 
gressional Committee,  investigating  the  strike  of  the 
Reading  Railroad's  men,  asked  General  Manager  Whiting, 
as  reported  by  the  Associated  Press :  "  Have  you  made  no 
effort  to  supply  the  places  of  the  striking  miners?" 

"No  sir." 

"Why?" 

"Because  we  desire  and  expect  our  old  men  to  come 
back." 

"On  your  own  terms?" 

"At  the  old  rates,  yes." 

"What  force  do  you  rely  upon  to  bring  these  men 
back?" 

"Well,  sir,  their  necessities." 

It  is  not  by  free  will  that  the  workingmen  of  to-day 
work  ten,  twelve  or  fourteen  hours,  take  competitive 
wages,  live  in  poor  tenements  at  high  rents,  spend  their 
days  as  the  mere  servants  or  grooms  of  machinery,  and, 


THE  NEW  CONSCEINCE  105 

sending  out  their  little  boys  and  girls  and  their  pregnant 
wives  to  work,  sacrifice  almost  everything  that  makes 
family  life  for  you  and  me  so  sweet.  They  do  not  submit 
by  consent  to  live  a  life  not  much  above  half  the  average 
length  of  that  of  the  prosperous.  Workingmen  the  world 
over  are  struggling  to  free  themselves  by  every  means  of 
strikes,  protest,  organisation,  even  to  the  desperation  of 
physical  violence.  Singular  behaviour,  is  it  not,  for  men 
who  are  only  doing  what  they  want  to  do?  They  are 
kept  down  by  force,  by  the  force  of  competition  instead  of 
conquest,  by  the  strategy  of  the  generals  of  supply  and 
demand.  Once  it  was  the  force  of  the  warrior,  now  it  is 
the  force  of  the  capitalist.  It  was  their  weakness  and  the 
strength  of  others  which  formerly  made  the  workingmen 
merchandise,  and  force  still  keeps  them  at  the  mercy  of 
the  markets.  But  the  unresting  heart  of  man  is  always  in 
revolt  against  ties  founded  on  force.  Yesterday  it  de- 
clared that  government  is  the  control  of  man  by  man,  and 
that  the  rights  of  rulers  are  drawn  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed.  To-day  it  avows  that  property  is  the  control  of 
man  by  man.  That  the  rights  of  the  ruled  are  the  source 
of  the  rights  of  the  rulers  in  property  as  much  as  in 
government.  That  if  the  common  people  can  be  allowed 
to  vote  in  government,  they  can  be  allowed  to  vote  in  that 
other  government,  property.  That  if  they  do  not  insist 
upon  their  right  to  vote  upon  all  affairs  of  property,  they 
will  lose  their  right  to  vote  in  matters  of  government. 
That  there  is  no  conscience,  new  or  old,  which  compels 
the  many  to  die  undeveloped  in  order  that  the  few  may 
live  misdeveloped. 

What  stirred  the  warrior's  heart  to  spare  the  captive 
instead  of  killing  him  was  the  first  beat  of  a  new  conscience. 
When  it  grew  stronger  it  said:  He  is  more  than  a  com- 
modity. Grown  stronger  still,  it  says  to  us :  His  labour 


106  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

is  more  than  a  commodity.  The  central  doctrine  of  the 
slave  power  was  that  the  labourer  was  merely  merchandise. 
The  central  doctrine  of  the  money  power  is  that  labour  is 
merely  merchandise.  Society  supports  the  latter,  as  it 
did  the  former,  with  the  consolidated  array  of  all  its  insti- 
tutions and  laws.  But  both  doctrines,  and  all  that  is 
built  upon  them,  are  absolutely  destructive  not  only  of  the 
liberties  of  the  labourer  but  of  the  liberties  of  all.  The 
conscience  that  said  the  labourer  shall  not  be  a  commodity 
though  despised  of  the  builders  is  now  a  cornerstone. 
A  new  conscience  takes  its  stand  before  all  our  institutions 
and  says  to  them :  Labour  shall  not  be  a  commodity,  for 
the  labour  is  the  labourer. 

Under  the  theory  of  merchantable  man  the  employer 
said :  My  workmen.  Under  the  labour  commodity  theory 
the  employer  says:  My  workmen.  Neither  means  my 
sheep  to  feed,  but  my  sheep  to  shear.  Congressman 
Hutton,  of  Missouri,  says  about  the  Reading  strike:  "I 
am  tired  of  reading  about  strikes.  Capital  should  be  at 
liberty  to  pay  whatever  it  sees  fit  for  labour,  and  to  em- 
ploy whom  it  chooses."  An  iron  manufacturer  lately 
said :  "  If  you  employed  on  a  large  scale  you  would  soon 
find  that  you  cease  to  look  at  your  men  as  men.  They  are 
simply  so  much  producing  power." 

If  the  Captains  of  Industry  can  reduce  ore  to  iron  only 
on  these  terms  of  reducing  men  to  units  of  power,  the 
sooner  the  Captains  of  Industry  are  discharged,  and  their 
places  filled  by  Brothers  of  Industry,  the  better. 

Henry  Ward  Beecher,  after  the  Emancipation  of 
Slavery,  said,  amid  enthusiastic  applause,  "We  have 
struck  the  shackles  from  the  slave,  and  made  him  free  and 
a  citizen.  Now  he  must  take  care  of  himself  and  work  out 
his  own  social  and  industrial  salvation."  Why?  asked 
the  new  conscience.  Is  he  not  still  your  brother  ?  Because 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  107 

you  have  abolished  one  of  the  wrongs  done  him  by  you, 
does  that  give  you  the  right  to  maintain  the  other  wrongs  ? 
Are  you  not  still  his  neighbour?  When  you  work  with 
him,  and  divide  proceeds  into  profits  and  wages,  will  the 
God  of  Plymouth  Church  considerately  turn  his  back, 
so  as  not  to  see  whether  you  love  your  neighbour  as 
yourself?  The  remark  of  the  great  pulpit  orator  epitom- 
ises the  whole  spirit  of  our  civilisation  toward  the  labourer. 
The  ancients  bought  and  sold  men ;  we  buy  and  sell  the 
heartbeats  only.  The  new  theory  that  though  the 
workingman  is  not  a  thing  his  labour  is  a  thing,  marks 
but  a  slight  advance  on  the  old.  It  means  that  the 
labour  can  be  bought  and  sold  regardless  of  the  man 
behind  it;  that  the  buyer,  the  employer,  can  take  any 
advantage  of  the  seller,  provided  he  does  it  under  the 
formulas  of  supply  and  demand;  that  to  buy  his  life  of 
him  cheap  and  sell  it  dear  is  all  we  have  to  do  with  the 
labourer;  that  the  only  conscience  the  buyer  needs  is  to 
observe  the  rules  of  the  market;  that  he  can  depress  or 
raise  prices  without  moral  responsibility  for  the  backs 
bent  or  hearts  broken  by  his  manipulations;  that  he 
can  take  more  than  he  gives,  regardless  that  the  "goods " 
he  gets  are  the  lives  of  workers  who  cannot  survive  if 
they  receive  less  than  they  give;  that  buyer  and  seller 
have  a  right  to  deal  with  each  other  as  if  they  were 
business  animals  instead  of  business  men.  The  labour 
is  the  labourer,  because  the  man  has  to  live  twenty-four 
hours  in  order  to  be  able  to  work  eight  or  ten.  His 
heart  and  head,  his  thoughts,  his  wants,  his  aspirations, 
all  co-operate  to  produce  the  so-called  commodity  which 
at  the  sound  of  the  factory  bell  is  ready  to  begin  the 
work  of  the  day.  When  the  man  leaves  the  factory  he 
but  takes  the  "commodity"  away  to  recuperate  his 
wasted  energies  for  another  day.  That  which  he  has  left 


io8  MAN  ,  THE   COMING  CREATOR 

within  those  walls  is  not  a  thing.  It  is  himself.  "  The 
great  fundamental  principle  of  anti-slavery  is  that  man 
cannot  hold  property  in  man,"  said  Garrison.  The 
doctrine  that  "labour  is  a  commodity"  gives  man 
property  in  man,  and  is  therefore  iniquitous  and  void. 
If  labour  is  a  commodity  the  labourer  is  a  commodity, 
and  chattel  slavery  still  exists,  freed  only  of  all  its  Biblical 
and  patriarchal  restraints,  possessed  of  powers  for  abuse 
more  dangerous  because  indirectly  exerted. 

If  you  shall  not  buy  the  whole  man,  you  shall  not 
buy  or  sell  part  of  a  man.  You  shall  not  count  into 
your  purses  the  ruddy  drops,  from  morn  till  noon,  from 
noon  to  dewy  eve,  and  then  say,  "I  know  not  whence 
they  came  or  how." 

We  who  "buy"  labour,  who  take  the  expenditure  of 
life  that  labour  can  part  with,  and  do  not  return  to  the 
labourer  that  share  in  the  produce  of  labour  which  will 
permit  him  to  repair  his  vitality,  maintain  a  family,  attend 
to  his  political  duties,  save  enough  for  sickness  and  old 
age,  have  enough  for  such  play  and  rest  as  will  enable 
him  to  live  to  his  allotted  span,  are,  in  the  words  of  the 
Bible,  "man  stealers."  In  our  day  and  civilisation  such 
a  man-stealer  is  as  bad  and  wicked  as  the  slaveholder  in 
his.  We  who  take  from  any  business  profits  or  interest  on 
capital  while  any  of  our  employees  are  suffering  for  want 
of  means  for  full  growth  as  individuals  or  citizens  are 
man-stealers,  and  we  as  man-stealers  are  to-day,  as  of  old, 
robbing  children  of  their  years  of  joy,  men  of  their  prime 
and  mothers  of  their  motherhood.  It  is  no  excuse  for 
merchant  or  manufacturer  or  mine  owner  or  railroad  cor- 
poration that  the  "  system  "  permits,  even  commands,  such 
wrongs.  Mankind  and  God  never  separate  the  sinner  and 
sin.  The  sinners  will  go  down  with  the  "system"  if  they 
don't  change  it.  The  money  power  so  contracts  with  tha 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  109 

working  man,  working  woman  or  working  child  that  it 
gets  the  whole  of  him  or  her  or  it,  as  Wordsworth  says, 
"health,  body,  mind,  and  soul" — it  gets  the  whole 
twenty-four  hours  of  him,  her,  or  it  —  and  says,  I 
cannot  share  with  you  enough  to  let  you  live  at  the 
rate  of  twenty-four  hours  a  day  for  a  natural  life.  I 
and  my  system  can  find  others  in  the  free  labour  market 
so  wretched  that  by  themselves  they  cannot  live  a 
week.  They  are  willing  to  give  me  outright  ten  hours 
a  day  if  I  will  but  pay  them  enough  to  live  at  the  rate 
of  fourteen  hours  a  day  for  the  few  years  their  bodies 
can  stand  it.  As  you  know,  our  God  is  a  God  of  competi- 
tion, supply  and  demand,  "free"  contract.  You  must 
take  the  wages  the  other  man  will  take,  or  yield  to 
him  your  "sacred  right  to  work."  This  may  seem  hard 
to  you,  but  you  must  admit  that  it  is  right,  for  all  our 
good  and  brave  business  men  and  their  college  professors 
will  easily  prove  to  you  that  you  are  not  a  man  but  merely 
a  seller  in  the  market,  and  your  labour  is  not  your  life, 
only  a  commodity.  When  the  employer,  the  nation,  the 
world  of  employers  sit  in  comfort,  and  the  employed  are 
massed  in  the  tenements  whence  comes  the  bitter  cry 
of  the  outcast,  and  where  poverty,  prostitution,  intem- 
perance and  premature  death  are  chronic,  are  they  on  one 
side  any  less  the  oppressors,  are  those  on  the  other  side 
any  less  the  victims  of  force  because  the  fashionable 
world  says,  "  Labour  is  a  commodity  "  ?  The  incantations 
of  political  economists  cannot  cure  disease.  Conscience 
cares  nothing  for  the  fine  phrases  of  professors,  statesmen, 
lawyers,  clergy,  employers,  for  their  theories  and  philos- 
ophy of  business.  It  says,  What  have  you  done?  What 
are  the  results  ?  Bother  your  theories  and  doctrines  of 
right!  Show  me  the  facts,  not  the  formulas!  It  looks 
at  Chicago  and  New  York,  at  Dives  in  his  palace  and 


no  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

Lazarus  in  the  slums,  at  the  profits  of  one  "brother"  and 
the  wages  of  the  other.  It  does  not  ask  what  church 
do  you  go  to  on  Sunday,  nor  who  were  your  professors  in 
political  economy.  No,  it  only  repeats  the  question  asked 
under  similar  circumstances  some  thousands  of  years  ago, 
What  hast  thou  done — where  is  thy  brother? 

Let  us  listen  while  a  delegation  from  the  Money  Power 
remonstrates  with  the  new  conscience  for  its  unreasonable 
sentiments  and  ideas.  Here  they  come,  one  by  one,  and 
range  themselves  about.  First  speaks  the  Merchant 
Prince : 

I  have  a  right  to  buy  where  I  can  buy  cheapest. 

Conscience. — See  these  little  stunted,  hollow-eyed  girls 
coming  out  of  that  factory! 

Lawyer. — Wages  are  settled  by  contract. 

Conscience. — Where  can  I  find  white-haired  working- 
men? 

Capitalist. — Every  man  has  a  right  to  do  what  he  will 
with  his  own. 

Conscience. — What  is  the  price  of  a  Senatorship  to- 
day? 

Statistician. — Never  were  food,  fuel,  clothing  so  cheap. 

Conscience. — Little  Mary  Mitchell  works  in  Waterbury's 
rope  works  five  days  a  week,  from  six  in  the  evening  till 
six  in  the  morning. 

Railroad  King. — Every  man  makes  his  own  career.  I 
was  a  working  man  myself  twenty  years  ago,  and  now  I 
keep  a  carriage,  a  butler,  and  several  judges  and  legislators 
"in  four  States,"  and 

Conscience. — That  tired-looking  man  is  a  conductor  of  a 
sleeping  car  belonging  to  a  company  owned  by  half  a  dozen 
men  worth  three  hundred  million  dollars,  which  is  not 
enough  for  them,  so  they  squeeze  a  few  more  dollars  a 
month  out  of  him  by  making  him  on  every  alternate  trip 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE 


in 


do  twenty-eight  and  a  half  hours'  continuous  work 
without  sleep. 

Banker. — Our  wealth  is  increasing  one  billion  dollars  a 
year.  We  have  boards  of  trades,  the  best  railroads  in 
the  world,  packing  houses  that  can  kill  ten  thousand 
hogs. 

Conscience. — The  sickening  stench,  the  blistered  air, 
the  foul  sights  of  the  tenements,  and  the  motherhood  and 
the  childhood  choking  there! 

Conservative. — This  is  the  best  government  in  the 
world.  America  is  good  enough  for  me. 

Conscience. — Listen  to  that  "tramp,  tramp,  tramp" 
of  a  million  men  out  of  work. 

Philanthropist. — The  Church  is  renewing  its  youth. 
We  give  millions  of  dollars  for  hospitals  and  foreign 
work  and  domestic  missions,  to  carry  the  gospel  to  the 
poor  of  all  nations. 

Conscience. — I  hear  a  voice  in  the  Abbey  that  cries, 
We  do  not  want  charity ;  give  us  work. 

Manufacturer. — Without  this  system  of  industry  the 
subjugation  of  North  America  to  civilisation  would  have 
been  impossible — we  could  never  have  shown  the  world 
the  magnificent  spectacle  of— 

Conscience. — There  is  a  little  boy  standing  ten  hours  a 
day  up  to  his  ankles  in  the  water  in  the  coal  mine! 

Coal  Monopolist. — I  have  a  statistician  who  can  prove 
—  he  can  prove  anything  —  that  the  workingman  is  a 
great  deal  better  off  than  he  ever  was,  that  he  makes  more 
than  I  do,  that  small  incomes  are  increasing  and  large 
ones  decreasing,  and  there  is  no  involuntary  poverty,  and 
that  the  workingmen  could  live  on  twenty-five  cents 
each  a  day,  and  buy  up  the  United  States  with  their 
savings — and 

Conscience. — How  long  will  it  be  cheaper  to  run  over 


ii2  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

working  men  and  women  at  the  railroad  crossings  in  the 
cities  than  to  put  up  gates? 

Clergyman. — The  poor  we  are  to  have  with  us  always. 

Conscience. — That  sewing  woman  you  see  pawning  her 
shawl  has  lived  this  winter  with  her  two  children  in  a 
room  without  fire.  Are  you  wearing  one  of  the  shirts  she 
finished? 

Statesman. — The  working  man  has  the  ballot  and  the 
newspapers.  He  is  a  free  citizen. 

Conscience. — As  the  nights  grow  colder  see  how  the 
number  of  girls  on  the  streets  increases! 

Now  what  can  a  man  of  affairs,  a  business  man,  a 
reasonable  man,  one  who  understands  political  economy 
and  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  and  all  that 
do  with  such  a  disputant  as  this?  The  more  the  pride 
of  America  points  to  its  magnificence  and  boasts  of  its 
Declaration  of  Independence,  the  more  does  the  new 
conscience  point  to  the  wrongs  and  sufferings  of  these 
miserable  men,  women  and  children — and  so  few  of  them 
too! 

All  extreme  cases,  you  say?  Just  so.  It  was  the 
possibility  of  its  extreme  cases  that  destroyed  slavery. 
The  possibility  of  such  extreme  cases  as  these  demand 
the  abolition  of  the  system  and  the  philosophy  which 
permits  them. 

Upon  the  false  theory  that  men  cease  to  be  brothers 
when  they  buy  and  sell,  upon  the  theory  that  employer 
and  employee  are  not  fellow  men  but  merely  dealers  in  a 
non-human  market,  is  built  up  the  false  society  in  which 
we  live.  The  new  industry  and  finance  have  put  the 
labour  of  mankind  under  the  control  of  the  Money 
Power,  which  declares  its  right  to  deal  on  all  sides  with 
men  according  to  the  rules  of  a  prize  ring  called  Supply 
and  Demand.  Conscienceless  and  greedy  a.s  the  old 


THE   NEW  CONSCIENCE  113 

slave  power,  its  competitive  rents  give  us  the  slums. 
Its  competitive  wages  leave  women  the  choice  between 
suicide  of  body  or  suicide  of  soul,  and  tempt  men  to 
find  in  the  stimulant  of  drink  a  substitute  for  the  stimulant 
of  food.  Professing  the  gospel  of  competition,  it  imports 
contract  labour,  breaks  up  trade-unions,  employs  and 
disemploys  labour  in  order  to  buy  cheap  of  men  who 
have  no  commodity  but  themselves  to  sell.  But  when 
it  turns  about  as  seller,  it  confronts  the  buyer  with 
pools,  trusts  and  combinations  denying  competition. 
The  revolution  of  the  new  industry  and  the  concentration 
of  wealth  have  given  the  Money  Power  unlimited  means 
to  buy,  and  the  morals  which  permit  it  to  buy  men  as 
commodities  permit  it  to  buy  everything,  even  the  things 
once  held  too  sacred  for  traffic.  The  system  that  denies 
the  manhood  of  man  in  the  most  sacred  function  of  all, 
labour,  must  deny  it  in  all  the  relations  based  on  this 
foundation.  The  system  which  permits  the  welfare  of 
the  labourer  to  be  settled  by  competition,  the  law  of  the 
market,  the  false  claim  of  property  to  do  what  it  will 
with  its  own,  must  allow  all  welfare  to  be  settled  by  the 
same  philosophy.  If  the  Money  Power  can  make  life 
and  the  means  of  life  mere  commodities,  it  makes  it  right 
to  buy  life  as  cheap  as  possible,  to  sell  it  as  dear  as  possible. 
It  makes  it,  when  bought,  the  buyer's  own.  Hence  the 
capitalist's  claim  of  a  right  to  do  as  he  will  with  his 
own  is  the  claim  of  a  right  to  do  as  he  will  with  human 
lives.  Such  a  system,  and  it  is  exactly  ours,  has  no 
moral  reserves  with  which  to  meet  the  Money  Power 
when  it  applies  these  principles  as  it  is  doing  to-day  in 
every  direction  to  the  moral  ruin  of  society.  Just  this 
result  is  being  worked  out.  The  Money  Power  with  its 
huge  fortunes  and  corporations  built  up  on  the  right  to 
treat  life  as  a  mere  commodity,  more  and  more  treats 


ii4  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

everything  else  as  a  mere  commodity — from  the  virtue 
of  employees  to  that  of  trustees,  public  and  private. 
It  refuses  to  respond  when  called  to  account.  It  simply 
asserts  its  right  to  buy  cheap  and  sell  dear,  and  to  do  what 
it  will  with  its  own.  Andrew  Carnegie,  before  the  Nine- 
teenth Century  Club,  dismisses  the  labour  agitation  by 
saying  in  effect,  "  Since  no  man  in  the  United  States  need 
be  a  pauper  unless  by  his  own  deliberate  act,  there  is  no 
labour  question."  Must  American  citizens  wait  to  redress 
their  wrongs  until  they  have  been  made  veritable  paupers 
by  the  Steel  Rail  Trust  and  its  confederate  price  con- 
spiracies? That  was  not  the  way  of  the  fathers.  The 
price  of  tea  in  the  American  Colonies  was  cheaper  after  the 
imposition  of  the  stamp  tax  than  before.  Nothing  could  be 
so  light  as  that — a  burden  of  less  than  nothing.  But 
Justice  Dana,  in  the  presence  of  a  great  assemblage  of  the 
angry  townspeople  of  Boston,  standing  under  the  Liberty 
Tree,  administered  an  oath  to  Mr.  Secretary  Oliver  that 
he  had  not  distributed  and  would  not  distribute  the 
odious  stamps. 

The  people  of  Boston  did  not  wait  until  they  had  been 
made  paupers.  "Enslave  but  one  human  being,"  said 
Garrison,  "  and  the  liberties  of  the  world  are  put  in  peril." 
Surrender  to  the  Money  Power  the  right  to  make  but  one 
price,  the  control  of  all  prices  will  surely  follow.  They 
who  control  the  prices  of  a  nation  control  the  liberties  of 
its  markets,  and  those  who  control  the  liberties  of  its 
markets  will  come  to  control  all  its  other  liberties. 

The  student  of  the  evolution  of  freedom,  from  Athens 
and  Calvary  to  Appomattox  and  Trafalgar  Square,  says, 
When  you  see  a  cause  against  which  all  the  powers  of 
law,  Church,  culture  and  wealth  are  united,  there  is  a 
cause  worth  looking  into.  If  there  was  nothing  in  it,  why 
should  all  these  mighty  institutions  be  so  disturbed  about 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  u5 

it  ?  And  if  you  find  all  customs,  statutes,  learnings,  creeds, 
logics,  bazaars  and  currencies  against  it,  look  at  it  still 
more  searchingly.  All  these  have  always  at  the  first  been 
united  against  any  new  conscience,  and  have  always 
conspired  against  it,  even  to  the  death.  Let  those  who 
are  the  great  because  others  are  small— let  those  who  are 
the  happy  because  others  are  wretched — let  those  who  are 
rich  because  others  are  poor — listen  out  of  their  golden 
security  for  the  crier  of  the  new  conscience.  His  voice 
foretells  a  new  day.  If  the  working  men  and  farmers 
have  once,  twice,  thrice  recognised  and  saved  great 
truths  neglected  by  the  powers  of  the  earth,  it  is  quite 
possible  they  may  do  it  again.  It  is  possible  they  are 
doing  it  now.  The  ardent,  sighing  for  a  cause,  bemoaning 
that  they  were  born  too  late  for  the  Anti-Slavery  agitation, 
have,  in  to-day's  ferment  of  the  poor  and  lowly,  the 
greatest  cause  of  history.  The  abolition  of  chattel 
slavery  has  but  cleared  the  ground.  Toynbee  Hall  in 
London,  and  similar  schools  elsewhere,  have  been  formed 
to  carry  university  culture  down  to  the  workingmen. 
The  movement  is  wrong  from  end  to  end.  It  is  the 
universities  that  are  in  need  of  culture — of  the  culture  of 
the  working  men  in  hardship,  and  equality,  and  sacrifice. 

The  great  New  England  divine,  Lyman  Beecher,  was 
very  much  put  out  because  the  fanatic,  William  Lloyd 
Garrison,  would  not  leave  the  slavery  question  to  settle 
itself.  It  would  do  so,  Beecher  said,  in  a  couple  of 
centuries.  Erasmus  deplored,  in  the  case  of  Luther,  that 
the  great  change  of  the  Reformation  was  not  allowed  to 
work  itself  out  slowly,  calmly,  and  without  violence  and 
disruption.  But  there  has  always  been  one  thing  that  put 
God  and  man  into  a  hurry — injustice. 

It  is  a  singular  truth  that  only  in  poor  and  primitive 
communities  is  there  enough  for  all.  Charles  Dickens 


n6  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

could  see  no  beggars  in  Boston  forty  years  ago.  Like  the 
early  England,  the  early  New  England  was  one  of  great 
poverty  but  of  great  independence  and  equality.  "No 
rich  man,  no  poor  in  it,"  said  Wendell  Phillips,  one  of  the 
patricians  of  modern  New  England ;  "all  mingling  in  the 
same  society;  no  poorhouse,  no  beggars;  opportunities 
equal."  Thorold  Rogers  says,  in  his  Economic  Interpre- 
tation of  History,  "  The  means  of  life  were  more  abundant 
during  the  Middle  Ages  than  they  are  under  our  modern 
experience.  There  was,  I  am  convinced,  no  extreme 
poverty.  The  essence  of  life  in  England  during  the  days 
of  the  Plantagenets  and  Tudors  was  that  everyone  knew 
his  neighbour,  and  that  everyone  was  his  brother's 
keeper.  Though  there  was  hardship  in  this  life,  the  hard- 
ship was  a  common  lot."  It  is  only  when  communities 
get  rich  that  there  is  not  enough  for  all.  The  indepen- 
dence and  equality  of  early  England  and  New  England 
were  close  to  the  ideals  of  Christ.  But  towns  and  the 
temptations  of  riches  have  been  too  much  for  the  virtue  of 
the  quickest  of  hand  and  eye,  and  they  have  moved  away 
into  Beacon  Street  and  the  West  End,  and  left  their 
brothers  in  the  tenements  and  factory  towns.  But  if  there 
was  enough  before  the  steam  engine  and  the  Pool,  there 
is  enough  now.  Those  who  control  the  labour  of  England, 
Old  and  New,  must  direct  it  more  evenly  to  equal  ad- 
vantage, or  they  must  give  way  to  those  who  will. 

The  lot  of  the  people  must  be  settled  by  the  common 
people.  If  railroads  and  factories  cannot  be  built  and 
operated  without  their  labour,  neither  can  the  proceeds 
be  divided  without  their  consent  and  co-operation. 
If  the  common  people  can  be  allowed  to  vote  freely  in 
government,  they  can  be  allowed  to  vote  freely  in  property. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  befuddle  the  subject  with  the  fogs 
of  political  economy  or  constitution  or  legal  intricacies- 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  117 

The  simplest  elements  of  justice,  freedom  and  love  supply 
the  only  profundities  needed.  The  question  between 
the  Money  Power  on  one  side  and  the  people  on  the  other, 
with  the  labourers  and  farmers  in  the  van  led  by  men  like 
Emerson,  Mazzini  and  Carlyle,  is  simply  and  sharply  a 
question  of  More !  more  for  the  People,  less  for  the  Power. 
If  you  want  to  quibble  about  words,  and  say  that  all  men 
are  workingmen,  then  the  question  must  be  denned  as 
one  between  rich  workingmen  and  poor  workingmen; 
between  workingmen  with  luxuries  and  workingmen 
without;  those  around  the  parks  and  those  on  the  farms; 
those  who  own  the  machinery  and  those  who  operate  it; 
between  the  workingmen  who  monopolise  and  those  who 
are  monopolised;  between  the  workmen  who  get  the 
privilege  of  living  in  shanties  as  their  share  of  coal  mining 
in  Pennsylvania  and  the  workingmen  who  get  dividends 
on  five  hundred  million  dollars  of  coal  stock.  Bring  on  all 
the  statisticians  in  the  world  to  figure  out  that  the  farmers 
and  workingmen  are  better  off  than  they  were.  Thorold 
Rogers  proves  it  is  not  true,  but,  if  it  were,  it  is  beside  the 
point.  They  are  not  getting  their  share.  Never  was 
there  a  country,  says  a  popular  preacher  of  Chicago,  in 
which  the  rich  have  done  as  much  as  in  America  for  the 
poor.  But  the  truth  is,  never  was  there  a  country  in 
which  the  poor  have  done  so  much  for  the  rich. 

The  leaders  of  the  revolution  of  the  new  industry  have 
quite  mistaken  the  terms  of  the  contract  with  society 
under  which  they  have  been  hired  to  do  these  great 
things.  Society  hired  them  to  work  for  society.  But  the 
captains  have  assumed  that  all  they  led  in  making  was 
to  be  their  own,  and  that  they  could  do  what  they  willed 
with  their  own.  They  still  have  something  to  learn. 

The  Conservative  cries  out,  "  You  are  going  to  destroy 
society." 


n8  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL    CREATOR 

Did  it  destroy  society  to  abolish  slavery? 

The  Conservative  cries  out,  "This  is  revolution!" 

No,  it  is  the  remedy. 

The  revolution  has  already  occurred.  That  took 
place  when  the  mighty  wheels  of  the  new  industry 
whirled  the  peasant  and  his  children  away  from  his 
little  homestead,  the  artisan  away  from  his  cottage  loom 
and  his  village  shop  and  non-competitive  brotherhood, 
and  herded  them  into  tenement  houses  and  factories. 
It  was  the  revolution  which  took  the  husbandmen, 
labourer  and  artisan  out  of  the  Golden  Age  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  which  preceded  the  new  industry.  Then  living 
was  cheap  and  men  were  dear,  the  working  day  in  field 
and  town  was  but  eight  hours  a  day.  Master  and  men 
both  belonged  to  the  same  union,  no  man  could  compete 
with  another  of  the  same  fraternity,  and  the  employee 
had  the  same  right  to  his  place  that  the  employer  had. 

It  is  the  revolution  which  has  changed  all  that. 

During  the  last  century  has  come  the  realisation  of  the 
vision  of  the  ancient  Greek  poet  who  foresaw  a  time  when 
"the  shuttle  would  weave  and  the  lyre  would  play  of 
itself." 

That  is  the  revolution. 

Time  was  when  judges  sent  men  to  jail  for  forestalling, 
cornering  the  markets.  That  was  in  the  "dark  ages." 
Now  the  Money  Power  establishes  "  trusts  "  in  everything, 
and  our  judges  tell  us  the  burden  of  monopoly  is  "light." 

That  is  the  revolution. 

The  new  industry  has  broken  up  the  brotherhoods  of 
the  old  industry,  and  has  swung  the  few  strongest  and 
cleverest  of  the  workingmen  into  palaces  and  front 
pews,  so  far  away  from  their  old  comrades  and  fellow 
workers  that,  as  one  of  them  said,  "I  have  no  time  to 
remember  their  faces,  much  less  their  names." 


THE   NEW   CONSCIENCE  119 

That  is  the  revolution. 

It  is  the  revolution  that  has  capped  the  new  industry 
with  the  high  finance,  and  tied  up  the  people  in  the  paper 
chains  of  charters,  contracts  and  stock-exchange  securities. 
"The  time  is  coming,"  said  the  Earl  of  Derby  not  long 
ago,  "when  the  people  of  Europe  will  repudiate  their 
national  debts,  which  now  take  eight  hundred  million 
dollars  a  year  from  them." 

That  is  the  revolution.  And  the  gospel  of  the  revolu- 
tion is  the  doctrine  that  you  can  do  anything  with  your 
fellow  man  provided  you  do  it  in  the  market. 

The  remedy  is  in  the  new  conscience,  which  says 
simply  that  a  man  shall  never  be  so  much  of  a  buyer  or 
seller  as  to  cease  to  be  a  brother,  and  that  labour  shall 
not  be  made  a  market  thing. 

Before  us  is  the  practical  question,  What  is  the  next 
step?  The  next  step,  like  the  first  step,  is  more  liberty 
for  the  labourer.  His  emancipation  still  invokes  us. 
Conscience  has  freed  him  from  frightful  abuses,  but 
frightful  abuses  remain.  His  growth  is  not  yet  full  and 
free.  Civilisation  groans  under  the  evils  of  the  revolution 
wrought  by  the  new  industry  and  its  philosophy.  The 
denunciation  by  our  prophets,  the  outcries  of  the  farmer 
and  workingmen,  the  attempts  to  regulate  factories, 
railroads,  mines,  tenements,  infant  labour,  are  all  con- 
fessions of  the  evil,  and  confessions  of  the  impotence 
of  the  system  which  produced  those  ills  to  remedy 
them.  A  gospel  of  hatred  is  rising  in  classes  and  masses 
which  hate  employers,  hate  employees,  hate  household 
service,  hate  household  servants,  hate  foreigners,  hate 
pools,  hate  trades-unions,  hate  the  grangers,  hate  re- 
formers, hate  politics.  All  these  are  symptoms  of  a 
high  fever.  But  a  new  mankind  has  been  conceived 
and  will  be  born — a  winged  beauty  out  of  the  earth- 


120  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

measuring  worm — which  will  not  know  force,  and  fraud, 
and  hatred,  and  will  let  love,  their  natural  tie,  bind 
men  and  nations  together.  The  practical  work  of 
to-day  is  to  abolish  the  cannibals  of  competition,  warriors 
of  supply  and  demand,  tyrants  of  monopoly,  monsters 
of  the  market,  devourers  of  men,  women  and  children, 
buyers  and  sellers  of  life.  The  progress  of  humanity, 
says  Emerson,  consists  of  recognition  of  the  truth  that 
every  private  and  separate  good  is  delusion.  Property, 
capital  and  money-making  as  now  permitted  are  still 
systems  of  man-hunting.  Monopoly  is  force,  and  force 
is  slavery,  and  slavery  must  be  abolished.  A  lover 
of  birds,  Maurice  Thompson,  tells  us  that  as  he  wanders 
through  the  Southern  forests  he  knows  afar  off  when  he 
is  nearing  a  human  habitation  by  the  songs  of  the  birds 
near  the  cabin,  which  declare  to  all  the  world,  by  a 
special  tenderness  of  tone,  that  they  love  man  and  have 
made  their  nest  near  his.  The  heart  of  man  is  not  less 
than  the  heart  of  the  bird. 

Churches  come  and  go,  but  there  has  ever  been  but  one 
religion.  The  only  religion  has  been  that  which  clears  off 
one  by  one  from  the  face  of  the  earth-stains  that  hide 
the  God  imprisoned  in  the  flesh,  which  breaks  down  one 
by  one  every  barrier  which  incarnation  has  put  in  the  way 
of  the  growth  of  the  God  within  in  the  likeness  of  the  God 
without.  In  the  sight  of  the  new  conscience  wherever 
man  walks  there  is  the  Holy  Land,  and  it  raises  the  cross 
of  the  new  crusade  which  shall  deliver  it  from  the  infidels 
who  deny  the  divine  right  of  the  people  that  the  will  of 
God  shall  be  done  on  earth  as  in  heaven.  It  insists  that 
every  question  between  men  is  a  religious  question,  a 
question  of  moral  economy  before  it  becomes  one  of 
political  economy,  and  will  make  all  political,  industrial 
and  social  activities  functions  of  a  new  Church — a  church 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  121 

of  the  deed  as  well  as  of  the  creed — a  church  that  will  not 
only  preach  Christ  but  do  Christ — a  church  where  science, 
the  revelation  of  what  has  been,  will  never  be  at  war  with 
religion,  the  revelation  of  what  ought  to  be — a  church 
which  will  make  its  worshippers  share  this  world  as  well 
as  the  next  world — a  church  which  will  recognise  no 
vested  right  of  property  in  man  except  the  right  to  love 
and  be  loved — a  church  which  will  declare  that  the 
difference  in  the  death  rate  between  the  classes  and  the 
masses  is  evidence  of  murder  done  for  money — a  church 
which  will  look  upon  idleness  by  the  side  of  industry, 
wealth  by  the  side  of  poverty,  luxury  by  the  side  of  want, 
health  by  the  side  of  disease,  as  impious  and  profane  in 
the  highest  degree,  the  real  sins  against  the  Holy  Ghost — 
a  church  which  will  stop  the  manufacture  of  poorhouses 
because  it  will  stop  the  manufacture  of  poverty — a  church 
which  will  not  let  any  man  offer  charity  to  those  to  whom 
he  refuses  justice — a  church  which  will  not  help  the  poor 
but  will  set  them  to  helping  themselves,  and  will  slay  the 
infidel  in  the  path — a  church  which  will  abolish  all  middle- 
men in  morals,  and  will  make  every  man  doubly  guilty 
who  grinds  the  face  of  his  fellow  by  an  agent  guilty  for 
himself  and  guilty  for  the  agent — a  church  that  will  offer 
not  even  the  lowliest  member  of  the  communion  of  man- 
kind crumbs  from  the  table  but  a  seat  at  the  table  and  a 
full  meal  three  times  a  day  every  day — a  church  that  will 
consider  it  more  practical  to  keep  its  buildings  open  and 
its  congregation  at  work  in  relays  night  and  day  than  to 
let  "brothers"  starve  and  freeze  or  go  astray  for  want  of 
sympathy  or  advice — a  church  which  will  persecute  the 
heretics  who  give  the  highest  bidder  the  best  pews  in  the 
churches  and  the  best  chance  in  the  courts — a  church 
which  will  teach  that  the  life  eternal  is  the  life  we  are 
living  now — a  church  which  will  not  let  the  poor  give  up 


122  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL   CREATOR 

all  of  this  world  on  the  unsecured  promise  of  the  rich  to 
divide  the  next  world — a  church  that  will  judge  civilisation 
not  by  the  six-million-dollar  cathedral  on  Murray  Hill 
but  by  the  children  in  the  back  alleys — a  church  that  will 
"dine  with  the  poor  and  preach  to  the  rich,"  until  there 
are  no  more  poor — a  church  which  says  that  those  who 
are  to  be  brothers  hereafter  must  be  brothers  here — a 
church  that  will  know  what  its  members  believe  only  by 
what  they  do — a  church  which  recognises  nothing  as  love 
which  does  not  bear  justice  as  the  fruit — a  church  of  law 
and  order,  but  the  law  is  for  the  rich  as  well  as  the  poor, 
and  the  order  is  to  be  peaceful  growth  for  the  least  of 
these  little  ones — a  church  which  will  prevent  the  anarchy 
from  below  by  punishing  the  anarchy  from  above — a 
church  which  will  deny  the  right  of  infanticide  to  the 
employer,  now  denied  by  society  only  to  the  parents — a 
church  which  declares  the  sacred  right  to  work  to  mean 
that  he  who  works  a  full  day  shall  live  a  full  day,  and  that 
employment  is  a  right  not  a  charity — a  church  which  will 
restore  reverence  to  men  by  giving  them  leaders  in  church, 
state  and  business  worthy  of  reverence — a  church  which 
will  make  every  social  wrong  a  moral  wrong,  and  every 
moral  wrong  a  legal  wrong — a  church  which  will  teach 
men  to  turn  the  other  cheek  when  they  can  do  it  as  free 
men  not  as  slaves — a  church  which  will  deliver  with  the 
message  of  peace  the  message  of  a  scourge  for  the  money- 
changers in  the  temple — a  church  which  will  tell  the 
merchant  prince  that  between  him  and  his  ruined  com- 
petitor, and  between  him  and  his  employees  there  is  a 
moral  question  greater  than  the  question  of  markets — a 
church  which  will  abolish  the  merchant  prince  and  the 
factory  corporation  sooner  than  let  them  abolish  the 
childhood  of  children — a  church  which  will  not  let  the 
employers  profess  on  the  Fourth  of  July  that  all  men  are 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  123 

born  equal,  and  then  fatten  the  rest  of  the  year  on  the 
advantages  of  organisation  which  they  deny  to  the 
employee — a  church  in  which  God  will  be  natural  and  men 
supernatural — a  church  which  will  abolish  charity  and 
philanthrophy,  for  these  cannot  be  between  brothers,  and 
need  not  be  where  justice  is — a  church  in  which  no  man 
will  have  a  right  to  do  with  his  own  what  he  will,  but  only 
a  right  to  do  what  is  right — a  church  which  will  take  the 
weak  and  despised  out  of  the  earthy  Inferno  of  dirt,  and 
want,  and  ignorance,  to  which  they  have  been  condemned 
by  the  oppressor — a  church  which  will  keep  a  hell  hot  in 
this  world  to  punish  the  oppressors  here  for  every  blow 
they  strike  at  God  through  his  image,  man — a  church 
which  will  tell  the  sinner  that  repentance  fit  for  heaven 
only  begins  by  restitution  and  reparation  on  earth — a 
church  which  will  teach  that  brothers  must  share  both  the 
mess  of  pottage  and  the  birthright — a  church  which  will 
worship  God  through  all  his  sons  made  in  his  image, 
through  a  mediator,  Mankind,  which,  having  suffered  all 
and  sinned  all,  can  sympathise  with  all,  and  will  carry  all 
the  weak  and  weary  ones  safe  in  its  bosom — a  church 
which  will  realise  the  vision  of  Carlyle  of  a  Human 
Catholic  Church. 

A  mankind  which  has  known  the  heroism  of  patriot, 
friend,  father,  son,  disciple,  lover,  thinker,  as  a  practical 
fact  of  its  daily  life  for  thousands  of  years,  doubts  the 
beautiful  consummation  of  a  social  conscience,  although 
it  is  already  securely  gathered  in  the  individual  as  a 
guide  and  inspiration,  stronger  than  any  hope  or  desire 
he  has  for  himself,  only  because  it  does  not  yet  know 
itself ;  those  who  see  must  reveal  this  beautiful  creation, 
humanity,  to  itself. 

We  can  see  in  the  careers  of  our  greatest  men,  our 
Turgots,  Washingtons,  Mazzinis,  in  the  coral-like  growths 


i24  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

of  unselfishness  and  tenderness  in  personal  and  social 
manners,  in  the  organised  and  unorganised  manifestations 
of  good-will,  that  the  new  conscience  is  already  well 
under  way  which  before  long  will  make  an  act  of  selfish- 
ness as  revolting  to  the  general  opinion  and  consequently 
as  rare  as  an  act  of  immodesty. 

"  Religion  "  of  any  age  is  the  dominant  generalisation  of 
that  age.  Above  the  other  inventors,  poets,  generals, 
philosophers  of  any  civilisation  rank  always  those 
geniuses  who  can  make  and  declare  the  formula  in  which 
all  other  truths  are  included — its  prophets.  All  the 
others  who  are  excellent  are  religious  in  so  far  as  they 
get  their  feet  in  the  ways  that  lead  to  the  summit,  but 
he  who  fuses  all  their  beings  into  the  inspired  declarations 
that  serve  as  a  guide  to  the  theory  and  practice  of  life,  he 
is  the  Master.  The  social  mind  continually  strives  for 
new  truths  and  new  expressions,  but  only  once  in  many 
ages  is  a  re-statement  of  fundamental  truths  needed 
and  only  once  in  many  ages  is  it  heard.  Moses,  Christ, 
Buddha,  Confucius — these  poets  are  quoted  by  millions 
of  men  for  thousands  of  years.  There  are  countless 
signs  now  in  current  literature  and  social  labour  that  a 
new  chorus  of  poets  is  training,  out  of  whose  preludes 
shall  come  another  great  voice. 

"The  first  one  who  makes  a  religion  of  Democracy 
will  save  the  world,"  Mazzini  wrote  in  substance.  He 
reiterated  that  the  religious  idea  is  the  very  breath  of 
humanity.  His  constantly  repeated  declarations  that 
Humanity  was  not  an  accident  but  an  aim,  life  its  mission, 
and  duty  its  highest  word  have  never  been  surpassed  for 
inspiration.  There  have  been  no  more  eloquent  char- 
acterisations than  his  of  the  faith  upon  which  he  was 
always  calling — that  faith  of  the  multitudes  in  their  own 
mission,  their  own  destiny,  which  arouses  the  multitudes 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  125 

and  is  the  parent  of  victory.  But  though  Mazzini  felt 
the  need  of  a  religious  conception  of  life,  still  he  did  not 
arrive  at  any  clear  idea  of  what  it  should  be.  His 
eloquence  and  insight  and  faith  were  after  all  but  the 
passionate  outcry  of  one  who  had  so  far  emancipated 
himself  from  the  old  that  he  knew — believed — there  was 
a  greater  revelation  for  men,  but  could  not  yet  discern  the 
new  day's  light.  It  was  a  great  feat  of  the  intellect  and 
the  heart  for  him  to  have  divined  and  expressed  so  much. 
It  was  all  one  could  do  who  had  not  been  widened  and 
enlightened  by  modern  science.  The  natural  law  and 
the  rights  of  the  individual  on  which  the  eighteenth 
century  built  its  revolutions — too  much  of  the  credit  of 
which  has  gone  to  the  spectacular  French — were  but 
emancipations  from  the  old,  and  no  mind  or  generation 
of  minds  could  perform  so  gigantic  a  feat  as  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  old  and  the  construction  of  the  new. 

The  whole  of  exhortation  in  religious  literature  calling 
upon  sinful  man  to  surrender  his  will  to  that  of  God,  to 
repent,  to  become  a  new  man,  to  obey  the  Ten  Command- 
ments, when  viewed  scientifically — and  this  scientific 
view  is  the  most  appreciative  and  sympathetic  view- 
is  a  highly  dramatic,  an  elaborately  allegorical  and 
symbolic  presentation  of  the  new  conscience  to  the 
individual.  God  is  simply  the  hero  of  a  religious  novel. 
What  was  actually  occurring  under  cover  of  this  romance 
of  the  seers  and  priests  was  that  the  minds  of  the  best 
thinkers  and  the  deeds  of  the  best  doers  were  working 
upon  the  commonalty  to  bring  them  to  accept  better 
thoughts  and  higher  models  and  more  fruitful  methods. 
Time  was  when  discoveries  and  inventions — new  fruits, 
better  sanitation,  the  building  of  boats — could  get  the 
favour  of  men  only  by  being  commended  to  them  as  the 
revelation  of  God  or  the  gods.  It  is  through  Allegory 


i26  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

and  Illusion,  says  Wagner,  that  men  most  easily  reach 
moral  truths.  There  was  a  stage  when  all  truth  had  to 
be  given  this  imaginative  touch  of  a  divine  origin,  and 
when  everything  that  happened  was  an  incident  in  the 
continued  story  of  the  Creation.  We  have  become  self- 
conscious  to  the  point  of  looking  upon  the  ordinary 
activities  of  life  as  human  and  secular;  we  are  now  ap- 
proaching the  step  up  into  the  self-consciousness  which 
will  see  that  the  aspirations  toward  a  higher  truth  are  as 
human  and  secular  in  the  regions  we  call  those  of  con- 
science as  in  those  of  the  industry  and  common  life 
which  were  once  handed  over  to  the  direct  administration 
of  divinity.  Hesiod  claims  the  authority  of  the  gods 
for  the  times  and  ways  of  sowing  and  reaping;  we  claim 
the  same  authority  for  the  ways  of  the  Higher  Life. 
In  one  we  shall  come  as  already  we  have  come  in  the 
other,  to  see  that  it  is  man  himself  who  is  the  authority 
for  himself.  Old  conceptions  are  ever  recurring  in  the 
development  of  humanity's  mind  and  life  in  new  and 
broader  and  more  beautiful  forms,  and  one  of  the  most 
fascinating  of  these  returns  is  unfolding  itself  now  in  the 
advanced  thought  which  is  again  claiming  a  divine 
sanction  for  every  act  and  idea  of  life — the  sanction  of 
the  divinity  of  man. 

All  the  control  gained  in  the  past  by  conscience  in 
all  its  forms — personal  and  ecclesiastical,  religious  and 
ethical,  political  and  physical — is  a  prophecy  and  guaran- 
tee that  man,  the  individual,  society,  is  destined  to 
succeed  in  the  struggle  to  supplant  with  the  rule  of  right 
the  rule  of  self-interest.  This  is  only  the  old  struggle 
between  right  and  might  carried,  logically  and  historically, 
into  a  new  and  wider  field.  The  first  man  who  denied 
himself  a  sensual  gratification,  because  it  was  forbidden, 
on  that  day  or  in  that  place,  or  under  those  present 


THE  NEW  CONSCIENCE  127 

conditions,  was  the  herald  of  the  day  now  in  sight,  when 
men  would  deny  themselves  life  itself  for  their  country's 
sake,  and  later  indulgences  of  wealth  and  power  for 
their  fellow  men's  sake.  Civilisation  is  simply  applied 
conscience,  and  Progress  is  a  widening  conscience. 
Society  in  a  thousand  ways  and  by  a  thousand  teachers 
sanctions  in  teaching  the  unruly,  selfish,  passionate, 
greedy  individual  and  associations  of  individuals  to  do 
not  what  wishes,  appetites  and  ignorances  prompt,  but 
that  which  is  right.  The  economists  who  preach  self- 
interest  as  the  guide  of  conduct,  and  the  men,  corporations 
and  nations  who  practise  it,  are  heathen,  atheists,  bar- 
barians— more  animals  than  men.  Men,  individually 
and  socially,  in  building  up  Conscience  as  the  rule  of 
life,  have  been  endowing  themselves  with,  creating  in 
themselves,  the  power,  ability  to  do,  at  the  price  of 
sacrifice  that  which  is  best  for  the  whole,  and  best  for 
the  highest  instead  of  that  which  is  best  for  a  part  and 
for  the  basest. 

The  new  conscience  is  creative  as  well  as  dutiful  and 
tender;  To  be  ethical  in  its  view  to  use  every  power  to 
its  fullest,  and  to  co-operate  to  the  utmost  with  all  for 
the  common  good.  Its  religion  is  to  do  more  than 
practise  the  peisonal  virtues  of  goodness;  it  can  express 
its  energies  of  righteousness  only  by  public  co-operation 
to  the  public  welfare.  Its  Golden  Rule  says,  Do!  Do!  Do! 
and  in  the  doing  do  as  you  would  be  done  by.  The 
new  religion  will  have  for  its  strongest  words,  not  Sub- 
mission, Repentage,  Trust;  but  Unite,  Create,  Rise, 
Progress!  It  will  not  be  converted,  it  will  convert. 


CHAPTER  VI 

NEW   CONSCIENCE   IN   INDUSTRY 

THE  individual  alone  cannot  fabricate  the  new  conscience 
nor  obey  it,  alone.  He  must  be  surrounded,  protected, 
stimulated,  co-operated  with  by  associates.  Society 
must  create  for  him  the  institutions  which  will  make 
possible  the  industrial  conscience.  Men  are  chaste, 
loyal,  so  far  as  they  are  so,  largely  because  they  are 
born  into  the  family,  the  Church,  the  State,  and  are 
moulded  by  their  institutions  into  brotherhood,  patriot- 
ism. The  world  needs  a  new  set  of  institutions  for  the 
new  conscience.  The  least  shrewd  observer  can  see 
society  already  at  work  making  these  new  institutions  t 
but  they  are  not  as  yet  established. 

The  most  desperate  mass  of  unregenerate  people  and 
the  largest  for  years  were  up  to  1889  the  London  dock 
labourers.  Hopeless  the  misery  of  these  people.  They 
gathered  daily  by  thousands  at  the  docks,  with  emaciated 
forms  and  leaden,  sunken  eyes,  huddling  together  lest 
they  might  fall  from  the  weakness  that  came  of  starvation. 
They  slept  before  the  gates  all  night  to  be  the  first  in 
the  morning,  and  when  the  gates  were  opened  trampled 
each  other  under  foot,  fighting  like  beasts,  for  the  chance 
to  get  in.  When  in,  they  were  driven  into  a  shed,  iron- 
barred  from  end  to  end,  and  herded  there  while  the 
foreman  walked  up  and  down  picking  and  choosing 
with  the  air  of  a  dealer  in  a  cattle  market. 

Mark  Valle  was  a  "  casual "  who  made  a  shilling  when  he 
could  unloading  ships  at  the  London  docks.  One  day 

128 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN   INDUSTRY         129 

he  went  for  his  pay.  As  it  was  handed  to  him  he  dropped 
dead  at  the  paymaster's  feet.  The  doctor  said  it  was 
starvation.  The  coroner  found  that  he  had  had  nothing 
to  eat  from  Saturday  till  Thursday.  Sunday  the  children 
had  a  little  stew  and  nothing  more  till  Thursday.  The 
father  went  without  on  Sunday  that  there  might  be  a 
little  more  for  the  children.  He  was  steady  and  temperate, 
the  neighbours  told  the  coroner;  he  was  a  good,  kind 
father,  said  his  oldest  boy  at  the  inquest.  His  wife 
was  in  the  insane  asylum — gone  mad  with  worry  and 
hunger.  There  were  seven  children. 

The  dockers  were  of  the  class  of  which  Thorold  Rogers 
says:  "There  is  a  large  population  collected  in  our 
great  cities  whose  condition  is  more  destitute,  whose 
homes  are  more  squalid,  whose  means  are  more  uncertain, 
and  whose  future  is  more  hopeless  than  the  poorest  serf 
in  the  Middle  Ages."  They  are  the  class  which  Macaulay 
predicted  would  be  found  in  our  American  cities,  a  pre- 
diction already  verified. 

All  about  this  degraded  and  embruted  population  rang 
Easter  Bells  and  Christmas  Chimes.  Magnificent  cathe- 
drals called  them  with  colour,  music,  eloquence,  warmth, 
to  listen  to  the  glad  tidings  of  Salvation.  Devoted 
disciples  of  the  Ecclesiastical  Establishment  went  among 
them  day  after  day,  to  take  to  them  the  gospel  of  Good 
Tidings  they  would  not  come  to  hear.  Lord  Mayor's 
Relief  Funds,  slumming  philanthropists,  Charity  Organisa- 
tions— societies  innumerable — all  took  their  shy  at  them. 
In  vain.  The ,  evangelisation  of  this  mass  of  misery 
appeared  as  desperate,  as  impossible,  the  last  day  as  the 
first.  They  would  not  be  converted.  Prowling  about 
for  work,  finding  in  drink  the  only  variety  in  their  lives, 
the  only  escape  from  misery,  often  beating  their  wives,  and 
starving  all  the  time — these  were  the  occupations  they 


1 30  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

unaccountably  preferred  to  the  pressing  duty  of  looking 
after  their  spiritual  emergencies.  What  they  made 
London,  Shelley  put  into  one  line:  " Hell  is  a  city  much 
like  London."  East  London  is  Hell  without  a  fire. 

One  day  three  workingmen,  one  of  them  a  socialist, 
whose  way  to  work  led  them  past  the  dock  gates,  moved 
with  compassion,  began  to  preach  to  this  multitude 
possessed  of  the  Devil.  Every  morning  on  their  way 
to  their  own  work  John  Burns,  Tom  Mann  and  Ben 
Tillett,  putting  down  their  dinner  pails,  gave  a  ten- 
minutes'  sermon.  They  preached  to  them  the  old 
doctrines  of  doing  as  they  would  be  done  by,  of  loving 
one  another,  of  putting  away  evil,  of  the  first  consenting 
to  be  the  last,  of  all  being  members  of  one  body,  of  re- 
generation. They  did  not  put  all  this  in  oriental  or 
theological  phrases  or  they  would  have  had  as  few 
hearers  as  the  missionaries  and  slummers.  Burns,  Mann 
and  Tillett  took  the  dockers  where  they  found  them, 
like  the  ox  fallen  in  the  pit,  and  preached  to  them  a 
practical  way  of  getting  out,  a  plan  of  immediate  salva- 
tion, for  body  and  soul,  for  their  wives  and  children. 
This  was  so  different  from  all  the  exhortations  they  had 
been  used  to  that  a  few  gave  heed  at  once.  The  number 
of  believers  grew.  Three  years  these  evangelists  preached, 
and  for  three  years  the  ties  of  the  new  love  of  fellow  for 
fellow  spread,  knitting  these  haters  together. 

The  glorious  day  came  at  last  when  faith  flowed  into 
action,  and  the  dockers  of  London  stood  forth  before  the 
world  and  said:  "We  will  be  men — beasts  no  longer. 
We  will  be  brothers — enemies  no  longer.  Here  we 
stand — members  of  one  body — the  least  among  us 
shall  be  first.  You  may  martyr  us ;  we  will  murder  each 
other  no  longer."  In  the  words  of  John  Burns.  "These 
men  had  been  the  embodiment  of  weakness  and  every- 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN  INDUSTRY  131 

thing  poor  and  insignificant.  They  were  the  despair 
of  the  social  reformer  and  the  ghost  of  the  milk-and- 
water  politician.  They  had  been  regarded  by  all  political 
economists  and  by  all  men  as  the  worst  specimens  of  the 
degraded  labour  of  all  countries."  They  who  had  fought 
to  take  the  bread  from  each  other's  mouths  marched, 
five  abreast,  up  and  down  London  in  harmonious  pro- 
cession, put  their  pence  into  a  common  fund,  for  the 
common  benefit,  and  with  their  employers,  the  public  and 
fellow  workmen  used  no  weapons,  but  reason.  The 
dignity  of  such  co-operation,  the  majesty  of  such  sacrifice 
for  the  common  benefit,  produced  its  counterpart  in  the 
domestic  moralities  of  the  people.  The  men  stopped 
drinking.  Quarrels  between  man  and  wife  had  been 
dreadfully  frequent  when  the  man  could  bring  home  only 
three  hours'  earnings  at  five  pence  an  hour,  or  as  often 
brought  nothing  for  weeks ;  but  they  now  became  almost 
unknown. 

This  was  the  greatest  revival  of  modern  times.  It 
revived  bodies  as  well  as  souls,  and  lifted  up  every 
brother.  This,  said  John  Burns,  is  not  a  demand  for 
more  wages.  It  is  the  spread  of  a  religion.  Its  ennobling 
vibrations  are  still  undulating  through  the  life  and  the 
thought  of  the  people  of  all  lands,  and  will  be  recorded 
in  forms  of  permanent  beneficence  in  the  life  of  the  race, 
like  curves  of  beauty  left  on  the  rocks  by  seas  long  gone. 
This  was  done  by  the  gospel,  but  it  was  not  the  "  simple 
gospel"  so  much  in  demand  by  our  fashionable  churches 
which  have  imperative  reasons  why  the  eleven  command- 
ments should  remain  what  Sydney  Smith  declares  the 
Scotch  girls  talk  to  their  lovers  in  metaphysical  Edinboro' 
— "Love  in  the  abstract."  It  was  not  the  "simple 
gospel,"  the  unapplied  gospel,  like  the  sunshine,  which, 
touching  no  earth,  runs  to  waste  between  the  stars. 


1 32  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

It  was  a  very  complex  gospel — a  gospel  of  body  as  well 
as  soul,  a  gospel  of  justice  as  well  as  love,  a  gospel  of 
brotherhood  which  drives  Cain  forth. 

John  Burns  preached  to  the  men  that  they  must 
conquer  themselves,  their  vices,  their  prejudices,  their 
envy  and  jealousy  of  each  other.  He  went  further. 
The  workmen  of  the  world  must  learn  to  conquer  these 
faults  and  themselves  and  expand  this  conquest  of  evil, 
this  union  of  the  good,  into  a  brotherhood  which  should 
band  the  earth.  He  preached  only  what  had  been 
preached — how  often  before! — but  he  showed  them 
where  the  first  step  lay,  and  his  plan  of  salvation  gave 
the  sinners  a  taste  of  brotherhood  and  comfort,  and  a 
chance  to  begin  the  real  life  of  Christ  right  away,  and 
they  followed  him  into  these  vestibules  of  heaven.  John 
Burns  also  uttered  what  may  prove  to  be  prophetic 
history-making  words.  "Here  is  a  peaceful  way,"  he 
said,  "  of  solving  the  social  problem  which  it  has  seemed 
revolution  alone  could  settle." 

The  universal  voice  of  the  poor — the  cry  of  the  un- 
employed in  San  Francisco,  Westminster  Abbey,  Chicago, 
Australia  and  South  Africa — where  they  have  their 
labour  question,  too — shows  that  the  people  understand 
this.  "We  want  work,  not  charity,"  they  always  say. 
They  want  their  own  fulness  of  growth,  which  gives  its 
brother  as  much  as  it  gets — and  more.  Charity  from  us 
to  those  who  are  made  to  need  it  by  the  very  superfluity 
we  take  for  ourselves  out  of  the  produce  of  their  labour  is 
an  insult  and  an  outrage.  The  people  have  always  felt 
it,  now  they  begin  to  understand  it.  Charity  as  we 
practise  it  is  but  the  insolvency  of  brotherhood,  paying 
back  one  cent  where  it  received  a  dollar.  "  If  you  gave 
the  poor  charity  a  few  years  ago,"  said  a  Buffalo  clergy- 
man, "they  would  thank  you.  Not  so  now.  It  is  not 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY          133 

only  charity,"  he  says,  "to  give  your  check,  but  to  see 
how  you  got  that  check." 

The  humanitarianism  of  the  Church,  the  Good  King, 
the  merciful  slaveholder,  the  kind  master,  the  benevolent 
pirates  of  Broadway  and  State  Street  has  not  been  a 
failure,  for  any  love,  any  repentance,  is  better  than  none. 
But  we  might  as  well  stop  reading  history  if  we  are  so 
dull  we  cannot  see  that  this  has  been  and  can  be  but  the 
prelude  to  the  real  humanitarianism,  which  seeks  to 
give  every  man  his  own,  or,  rather,  to  let  him  keep  his  own. 

Jesus  said:  "Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's,  and  unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's,"  but 
He  did  not  say  what  things  are  Caesar's.  The  test  of 
time  has  shown  that  all  the  things  the  Caesars  claimed 
belonged  to  God.  The  things  that  are  really  Caesar's 
are  only  those  that  are  any  man's — the  right  to  be  one 
of  all,  and  to  be  a  brother.  The  deepest  among  the 
"causes  of  the  present  discontent,"  to  use  Burke's 
phrase,  is  that  to-day  the  enlarging  conscience  which  has 
pushed  aside  King  and  Priestcraft  feels  itself  pushing 
with  its  tender  shoots  against  the  hard  crust  of  the  insti- 
tutions of  property.  "Things  are  in  the  saddle  and 
ride  mankind,"  and  as  they  ride,  like  Tennyson's  Northern 
Farmer,  declare  that  "the  poor  in  a  loomp  is  bad." 

The  Church  is  Conscience  in  action,  and  conscience  is 
the  music  of  behaviour  in  large  and  small — the  ordering 
of  life  to  the  growing  harmony  revealing  itself  to  be  the 
law.  Animals  vary  upward,  according  to  Lamarck, 
from  low  and  inferior  types  mainly  by  wishing.  The 
saying  that  men  are  always  praying,  and  their  prayers 
are  forever  being  answered  shows  man  responding  to  the 
same  law.  Every  conscience,  even  the  most  primitive, 
grows  with  some  response  to  the  rhythmic  beat  of  the 
right  of  things.  And  there  come  times  and  places  of 


134  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

exaltation,  the  bedside  of  Socrates,  the  cross  of  Christ,  the 
pyre  of  Savonarola,  the  scaffold  of  Vane,  when  an  ecstasy 
from  the  universal  conscience  without  pours  a  new  strain 
into  the  "still,  sad  music  of  humanity"  which  is  never 
again  as  still  or  sad.  Man,  responsive,  bends  the  very 
rocks  and  trees,  codes  and  constitutions,  to  fix  its  waves 
in  things  of  beauty,  and  as  the  rapture  grows  becomes 
every  day  more  a  friend. 

Screams  of  pain  from  the  business  district  fill  our 
ears  and  disclose  the  moral  paradox  of  our  times.  No 
man  may  take  one  child,  tie  it  to  a  post  and  underfeed 
and  dwarf  it.  But  the  model  merchant  may  tie  thousands 
of  children  to  his  wheel  and  return  them  to  the  world 
dwarfed  forever  in  body  and  mind,  robbed  of  their  too 
little  of  the  joy,  freshness  and  sweetness  of  life,  to  increase 
his  too  much.  He  may  do  this  and  remain  the  model 
merchant,  the  model  citizen,  the  model  husband,  father 
and  parishioner.  Business,  Cardinal  Manning  declared, 
is  destroying  the  family  life  of  the  working  classes.  In 
our  child  labour  and  destruction  of  family  life  we  curse 
and  dishonour  the  fatherhood  and  motherhood  of  the 
world,  and  make  it  inevitable  that  the  days  of  so  wicked 
a  society  shall  be  short  in  the  land.  Our  pretence  that 
we  cannot  so  divide  the  fruits  of  labour  as  to  give  the 
labourers  out  of  their  own  produce  all  that  they  need 
for  a  fuller  and  fairer  life  is  a  lie. 

In  the  family  we  love  each  other;  in  the  state  we 
have  begun  to  bear  each  other's  burdens;  and  in  many 
forms  of  associations  there  is  a  suspicion  of  brotherhood, 
mercy,  love,  the  emancipation  of  each  by  the  co-operation 
of  all.  These  high  morals — and  mechanics — of  the 
highest  life  business  philosophy  avowedly  excludes 
from  its  jurisdiction.  They  are  good  enough  for  the 
family,  the  state;  they  are  magnificent,  but  they  are  not 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY          135 

business.  Now  these  are  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  If  they 
rule  anywhere,  they  rule  everywhere.  The  world  of 
business,  supply  and  demand  denying  them,  reveals  itself 
to  be  the  Darkest  Continent,  where  there  is  no  God. 
This  is  the  atheism  which  menaces  the  religious  life  of 
mankind.  The  system  based  on  it  is  breaking  down  all 
over,  in  strikes,  riots,  panics,  gluts,  unemployed  idleness 
and  class  murder.  It  is  breaking  down,  not  because  the 
task  of  getting  plenty  for  the  body — and  the  soul — for 
everyone  out  of  the  fruitful  earth  and  the  fellowship 
of  man  is  an  impossible  task,  but  because  the  task  is  an 
impossible  one  of  accomplishing  that,  or  anything  else 
in  human  affairs,  by  the  Devil's  code  of  selfishness  instead 
of  love;  of  solitary  advantage  instead  of  the  good  of  all. 
By  such  a  philosophy  there  could  be  no  government,  no 
family ;  and  if  it  continues  there  will  ere  long  be  no  busi- 
ness. But  it  cannot  continue. 

We  are  on  the  eve  of  another  of  the  great  expansions— 
or  extensions — which  have  made  up  the  civilisation, 
evangelisation,  of  the  world.  Emerson's  felicitous  phrase, 
"the  growth  of  natural  goodness,"  touches  the  inner 
force  which  exhibits  itself  in  the  outer  forms  of  courts, 
families,  states  and  society;  and  these  we  see  constantly 
rearranging  themselves  to  give  more  or  better  play  to 
the  growth  within.  In  the  Christian  expansion  the 
glimmering  idea  that  one  people  were  chosen  to  hear  the 
divine  truth  that  makes  men  free  was  broadened  out 
in  the  discovery  that  all  people  are  so  chosen.  Peace 
has  spread  until  now  the  nations  are  within  sight  of  a 
morality  long  since  reached  by  the  individual.  Industry 
is  the  only  department  of  domestic  life  where  the  right 
of  private  war  is  still  asserted,  and  there  all  the  influence 
of  one  side  is  being  thrown  in  favour  of  arbitration  and 
against  the  barbarian  whose  voice  is  still  for  war.  The 


136  MAN,   THE    SOCIAL    CREATOR 

sentiment  of  humanity  has  widened  until  we  are  beginning 
to  be  sensitive  to  blood  shed  by  bargain  hunters,  and  the 
factory  acts  are  but  a  late  carrying  into  a  broader  field 
the  same  duty  of  protecting  the  weak  with  which  we 
charge  the  policeman  in  the  streets.  The  Republic 
came  out  of  Monarchy,  and  Christianity  out  of  paganism ; 
something  is  to  come  out  of  Republicanism  and  Christian- 
ity. The  business  world  is  a  chamber  of  horrors,  because 
it  is  a  region  where  men  are  forced  to  associate  but  where 
they  defy  the  laws  of  association. 

The  new  conscience  can  now  be  seen  beginning  its  work 
of  bringing  order  into  that  chaos  by  asserting  there,  as 
everywhere  else,  that  the  only  individualism  which  is 
"fit"  and  can  survive  is  that  of  the  brother,  the  friend, 
the  citizen,  who  have  learned  that  to  gain  their  rights 
they  must  give  them,  and  that  the  more  they  give  the 
greater  they  are.  Science  and  Conscience  are  about  to 
extend  to  industrial  life  that  compromise  between  the 
inequality  of  the  animal  and  the  equality  of  the  brother 
by  which  all  civilisation  has  become  possible — which  is 
civilisation. 

The  scrambling  of  mankind  over  each  other  for  property 
is  but  a  passing  phase  of  the  moon.  In  the  name  of 
"property"  we  are  producing  the  millionairism  and 
squalor  which  denies  property  to  a  majority  of  millions. 
True  property  can  only  be  got  as  citizenship  was  got, 
by  giving  to  all  that  we  may  receive  from  all.  Those 
who  come  after  us  will  be  able  to  see  that  only  idiots 
could  have  believed  that  we,  a  minority  of  thousands 
against  millions,  could  succeed  long  in  holding  up  a  system 
under  which  we  eat  and  glow,  while  those  who  raise 
the  food  and  dig  the  coal  watch  us  in  hunger  and  chill; 
a  system  under  which,  to  make  our  homes  shine  with 
jewels,  and  gold,  and  happy  faces,  a  mournful  procession 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY         137 

of  fathers,  mothers  and  little  children  issues  forth  every 
winter  morning,  while  it  is  yet  dark,  out  of  thousands 
of  homes,  and  return,  again  in  the  dark,  squeezed  dry 
by  us  and  for  us,  to  gain  the  precious  boon  of  sleep, 
enough  to  be  given  another  such  day,  literally  cutting 
off  their  day  to  add  to  ours. 

One  of  the  banners  carried  in  London  in  the  Eight 
Hours'  procession  Monday,  May  5,  1890,  bore  this  device: 
"We  kill  ourselves  to  feed  ourselves."  To  have  been 
accurate  it  should  have  read  "to  underfeed  ourselves." 
A  conscience  is  stirring  to  make  good  its  belief  that  if 
property,  security  of  life  tenure,  the  material  pedestal 
for  the  spiritual  life,  is  good  for  me  it  is  good  for  you,  if 
good  for  one,  for  all.  If  it  is  a  social  product,  created  by 
all  men,  all  men  have  a  right  to  it,  for  it  is  but  freedom 
of  conscience  extended  to  material  things.  The  "  evangel- 
ical conscience"  which  grew  within  the  chains  of  slavery 
until  it  burst  them  now  feels  its  spiritual  capacity  suffo- 
cating in  the  air  of  the  market.  It  declared  first  that 
man  should  not  be  a  commodity,  then  that  labour  should 
not  be  a  commodity;  now  it  makes  these  part  truths 
blossom  into  the  full  truth  that  nothing  shall  be  a  com- 
modity, if  commodities  are  to  be  covers  for  dealing  with 
our  fellow  men  falsely,  selfishly,  homicidally.  The 
prophets  are  already  born  who  are  to  lead  us  into  the 
new  dispensation  which  shall  enlarge  our  narrow  polity 
into  the  glorious  fulness  where  all  shall  be  free  not  only 
to  hear  the  truth  but  to  live  it ;  where  peace  shall  be  the 
atmosphere  of  life ;  where  the  service  of  brother,  widened 
to  the  service  of  countrymen,  shall  grow  into  the  service 
of  all  men;  and  where  the  wealth  of  the  few  shall  sink 
to  rise  again  in  the  Commonwealth.  These  are  but  the 
forces  and  principles  in  terms  of  which  all  human  progress 
has  been  written,  and  in  the  extension  of  them  to  the 


i38  NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY 

Dark  Continent  of  Commerce  we  can  read  the  secret  of 
the  history  the  finger  of  time  is  about  to  write. 

Osborne  Ward  tells  us  in  his  "Ancient  Lowly"  that 
the  orator  who  rose  in  Judea  more  than  nineteen  hundred 
years  ago  out  of  the  labouring  class  did  but  bring  into 
the  light  the  principles  of  the  organisations  to  which 
workingmen  of  that  day  universally  belonged.  There 
existed  then  innumerable  associations  which  counted 
millions  of  despised  workers  who  only  by  union  could 
stand  up  against  the  cruel  system  of  that  civilisation. 
Through  all  their  forms  of  ritual  and  obeisances  to  tutel- 
ary gods — a  religious  complexion  they  assumed  to  gain  the 
right  of  meeting — there  was,  he  says,  an  uncompromising 
devotion  to  the  rougher  forms  of  brotherhood.  In  the 
midst  of  a  world  given  to  laughter,  slavery  and  hatred, 
"the  workmen  had  wrought  unseen  below  the  surface 
the  revolution  of  brotherhood  for  unnumbered  ages  before 
Jesus  came  to  sweep  it  by  one  magnetic  and  amazingly 
omnipotent  stroke  out  of  their  modest  secrecy  into  the 
open  blaze  of  public  opinion."  Jesus  said  :  "  The 
foxes  have  holes,  and  the  birds  of  the  air  have  nests, 
but  the  Son  of  Man  hath  not  where  to  lay  his  head." 
Tiberius  Gracchus,  one  hundred  and  forty  years  before, 
said :  "  Wild  game  have  holes,  but  the  poor  who  struggle 
and  die  for  Italy  have  air  and  light;  nothing  more. 
Houseless  and  homeless  they  wander  with  their  wives 
and  little  ones."  "Christ,"  says  Ward,  "boldly  took  up 
the  unionists'  social  methods,  their  fraternal  love,  their 
meek,  silent  humility,  their  secret  work,  brought  them 
grandly  forth  from  their  obscurity,  proclaimed  with  an 
irresistible  pathos  the  absolute  equality  of  man,  and 
succeeded,  before  he  could  be  brought  to  the  cross  by  a 
maddened  society,  in  forcing  the  vast  movement  upward 
into  view  for  adoption  finally  by  the  whole  world." 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN  INDUSTRY        139 

It  has  always  been  the  unlearned  who,  as  Mazzini 
says,  have  "ever  been  the  first  to  seize  and  compre- 
hend through  the  heart's  logic  the  newest  and  most  dar- 
ing truths  of  religion."  The  new  Church  always  lays  its 
corner-stone  among  the  wretched,  for  their  greater  woe 
is  the  clearer  clue  to  the  seat  of  the  sin.  It  always  has 
been,  always  must  be,  in  the  name  of  the  poor  and  lowly 
that  the  Saviours  come.  "In  the  voiceless  religion  and 
uncomplaining  duty  of  the  peasant  races  throughout 
Europe,"  says  Ruskin,  "is  now  that  Church  on  earth 
against  which  the  gates  of  hell  shall  not  prevail."  The 
poverty  of  the  workers  is  the  sin  of  our  age.  It  is  in 
the  name  of  the  landless,  the  unemployed,  the  striker, 
the  penniless,  the  factory  child,  the  foreclosed  farmer 
and  worn  child-bearing  women  that  the  new  Church 
of  the  Humanitarian  is  forming.  The  agitators  teach- 
ing the  farmers  and  working  men,  and  especially  the 
working  girls  and  sewing  women  to  combine  are  high 
among  the  Apostles  of  the  new  Church,  for  without 
union  the  men  cannot  be  free,  and  without  free  men 
the  world  cannot  be  free.  The  Earl  of  Shaftesbury, 
one  of  the  noblest  men  of  modern  times,  giving  his  life, 
with  the  help  of  the  labour  movement  and  against  the 
opposition  of  the  clergy  and  the  rich,  to  lifting  up  the 
women  in  the  mines,  the  children  in  the  chimneys,  the 
hands  in  the  mills  and  the  hands  on  the  farms,  into  the 
possibility  of  a  human  life,  was  in  his  time  the  head  of 
the  real  Church  of  England. 

To-day  the  strange  music  has  reached  even  the 
Church,  frightening  a  Lord  Melbourne  and  causing  him 
to  exclaim :  "  Do  not  attack  the  Church,  leave  it  alone ; 
it  is  the  only  remaining  bulwark  against  Christianity." 

This  is  a  hard  saying  that  the  labour  movement  among 
the  farmers,  workingmen  and  social  reformers  of  all 


1 40  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

schools  is  the  Church  which  is  incarnating  the  New 
Conscience.  But  so  it  seems  to  be.  It  recognises  the 
body  as  part  of  the  soul,  and  teaches  salvation  for  both. 
It  extends  into  the  social  void  and  chaos  of  the  new 
wealth  the  forms  of  order,  peace  and  love.  It  is  exercising 
the  passions  of  greed  and  hate  that  are  playing  hide-and- 
seek  in  the  interstices  of  our  social  reorganisation.  It  is 
demanding  that  the  anarchy  of  business  be  civilised  by 
the  acceptance  there  of  the  principles  of  citizenship 
instead  of  Cainship.  It  insists  that  competition,  instead 
of  claiming  a  sort  of  state  sovereignty,  should  come  into 
the  union  and  like  all  other  social  forces  acknowledge  the 
rule  of  the  people.  It  is  putting  these  doctrines,  which 
are  all  old  enough,  into  an  every-day  application  in  an 
actual  organisation,  and  living  them,  really  dying  for 
them,  as  the  workingmen  and  their  women  and  children 
in  many  a  strike  have  done.  The  labour  movement  thus 
shows  itself  to  be  walking  in  the  way  of  salvation  which 
so  many  are  anxiously  seeking.  Uncouth,  ignorant, 
despised,  many  of  these  men  are.  Vicious,  too,  we  are 
told.  But  we  can  remember  that  to  many  of  his  con- 
temporaries Christ  was  only  a  glutton  and  a  winebibber. 
They  have  no  cathedrals  except  the  blue  sky  that  bends 
over  the  evicted  and  evictor  alike.  They  have  little  art 
or  music.  These  grow  but  slowly  in  slums  and  cata- 
combs, but  history  has  seen  them  grow  there  while  the 
art  in  the  air  above  died. 

There  is  this  mighty  difference  between  the  labour 
movement  and  all  the  Utopias.  While  a  few  clubs  and 
drawing  rooms  are  watering  and  warming  their  little  hot- 
house Utopias  with  sentimental  smiles  and  tears,  the 
labour  movement  grows  of  itself  outdoors — cannot  be 
stopped  from  growing.  The  learned  prove  it  can't  grow, 
the  mighty  swear  it  shan't  grow — and  it  grows.  It 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY  141 

grows  wisely,  more  wisely  than  the  older  brotherhoods 
of  the  Guilds  of  the  Middle  Ages  and  antiquity.     "I 
perceive,"  says  Ruskin,  "the  real  cause  of  the  decay  of 
the  Guilds  of  Europe  to  have  lain  chiefly  in  their  selfish- 
ness   and    isolation."     Our    modern    movement    sails    a 
broader    sea.     The    Local    Brotherhood   centres    in    the 
National,  and  the  ideal  of  the  International  organisation 
of  each  trade  is  on  the  way  to  realisation.     The  National 
Brotherhoods    combine    in    the    Federation    of    Labour. 
The  International  Trades-Union  and  other  Workingmen's 
Congresses  are   making   practical   progress   toward   the 
international  organisation  of  all  labour.     The  farmers' 
unions    and    the  workingmen's   are   allying    themselves. 
The   new  nation — the   Internation — is   almost   born,    in 
which  every  man  will  be  a  sweater,  but  only  of  his  own 
brow.     In  this  broadening  of  these  brotherhoods  beyond 
the  limits  of  calling  and  locality,  in  their  universal  demand 
for  arbitration  instead  of  war  and  strikes,  we  see  enter 
that    greatest    personage    of    all — the    people — absent 
hitherto  at  the  council  boards  of  the  labour  movement. 
In  all  this  we  have  the  possibility,  the  potency,  the 
promise  of  a  social  regeneration  with  peace  and  prosperity. 
It  was  this  John  Burns  meant  when  he  said  that  the 
dockers'  strike  had  shown  a  peaceful  way  of  solving  the 
social  problem  which  it  was  thought  revolution  alone 
could  settle.     Such  organisations  as  these  of  the  farmers 
and  the  workingmen  can  be  made  the  ribs  of  the  state. 
The  future  appears  to  offer  to  us  as  an  alternative  to 
the  labour  movement  a  choice  between  a  social  breaking 
up  in  comparison  with  which  the  catastrophe  of  the  old 
Pagan  civilisations  was  but  a  summer  lightning,  a  dead 
level  of  centralised,  monotonous  industrial  organisation, 
a   false   socialism  imposed   on   the   masses   by   cunning 
Kings  and  Capitalists.     These  can  be  seen  already  at 


i42  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

work,  with  their  Imperial  rescripts  and  Congressional 
Anti-Trust  bills  aimed  at  labour  alone.  This  false 
socialism  would  arrest  human  progress  indefinitely  by  a 
despotism  beyond  anything  on  record.  If  our  present 
civilisation  continues  it  must  of  necessity  be  centralised 
beyond  all  past  experience.  The  whole  world  is  becoming 
one  market.  Individual  liberty,  if  it  is  to  survive,  must 
offset  this  high  centralisation  by  an  equally  deep  specialisa- 
tion of  person,  place  and  pursuit. 

This  Labour  movement — this  new  Church  and  State — 
is  no  dream  of  the  twentieth  century.  It  is  a  big  fact 
of  to-day — the  biggest  fact.  It  has  its  poets,  philoso- 
phers, prophets,  friends,  who  have  found  in  the  suffering 
of  the  people  the  secret  of  literature.  It  has  hundreds  of 
students  of  economic  science;  fanatics  as  devoted  as  any 
petrels  that  ever  flew  the  storm,  a  world-encircling  labour 
press. 

On  the  first  day  of  May  millions  of  men,  by  a  voluntary 
impulse  thrilling  across  all  the  boundary  lines  of  inter- 
national hatred,  have  poured  into  the  streets  of  Europe 
and  America,  at  a  cost  to  themselves  of  many  millions 
of  dollars,  to  bear  witness  to  the  faith  of  their  out- 
raged bodies.  These  figures  bent,  these  hands  har- 
dened, these  faces  aged,  by  millions,  for  you  and  me,  will 
gather  again  and  again  in  these  streets.  Let  us  go  to 
them ;  they  will  call  us  brother,  sister.  In  the  dockers' 
strike  three  things,  making  a  new  era  in  the  social  life 
of  the  world,  as  John  Morley  pointed  out,  happened  for 
the  first  time  in  history.  Skilled  labour  came  to  the 
help  of  the  unskilled;  the  well-to-do  came  to  the  help 
of  the  poor;  the  world  came  to  the  help  of  the  locality. 
There  are  dull  and  sodden  individuals  who  seem  to  care 
for  nothing  above  the  low  round  of  animal-like  existence. 
But  for  us,  and  for  our  times,  it  is  a  salient  fact  that  the 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN  INDUSTRY         143 

masses  are  outreaching  for  participation  on  equal  terms 
in  the  good  and  the  goods  they  produce.  What  puts 
the  outreaching  as  an  imminent  and  practical  issue  on 
the  order  of  the  day  for  to-day  is  the  further  fact  that 
modern  means  of  production — men,  machinery,  land, 
science,  good-will — are  ample  to  produce  showers  of  gold 
for  all,  and  another  fact,  that  we — the  American  and 
European  peoples — have,  through  the  division  of  labour, 
the  concentration  of  industry  and  the  general  experience 
of  working  without  the  eye  of  the  master,  acquired  the 
moral  qualities  needed  for  working  in  masses  for  an 
employer  not  in  sight.  The  public  could  step  into 
the  place  of  the  absentee  capitalist  in  thousands  of  indus- 
tries without  the  slightest  jar  to  the  machinery.  There  is 
one  exception,  and  it  is  a  very  important  one.  Farming 
has  not  yet  been  consolidated,  capitalised.  It  is  still 
an  occupation  of  small  men  with  small  capital.  But 
the  vortex  of  concentration  has  begun  there,  too. 

Greater  than  the  waste  of  land,  greater  than  the  waste  of 
manual  labour,  greater  than  all  the  other  wastes  of  the 
wealth  of  King  Demos  to-day  is  the  waste  of  the  genius  of 
the  Hampdens,  Miltons,  Cromwells,  who  "  rest  their  heads 
upon  the  lap  of  earth,"  unexpressed  to  the  last,  because 
"their  lot  forbade."  Is  there  a  right  in  every  child  to 
his  opportunity — a  natural  right?  Why  lose  ourselves 
in  these,  as  the  great  Stein  called  them,  metaphysical 
abstractions?  Enough  to  know  that  we,  men  and 
women,  members  of  society,  are  the  creators  of  social 
rights,  and  can  give  and  gain  rights  without  any  other 
limit  than  that  of  the  common  consent  and  common  co- 
operation. We,  creators  of  society,  can  guarantee  to  every 
one  of  ourselves  the  preparations  for  entry  into  the  race. 

"Must  we  dig  sewers,  or  do  scavenger  work,  or  scrub 
isdewalks?  Others  are  doing  that  for  us.  Must  we 


i44  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

do  it  for  them,  under  your  Golden  Rule?  Is  the  poet  to 
be  put  to  breaking  stone  because  someone  is  breaking 
stone  to  make  the  road  smooth  for  him?" 

This,  triumphantly  put,  is  the  question  which  in  one 
form  or  another  is  always  shot  forth  as  a  poser  to  those 
who  preach  that  the  Golden  Rule  is  as  much  the  law  of 
industry  as  of  the  Church  or  of  politics.  This  is  a  test 
question. 

The  answer  is,  Yes. 

Those  who  cannot  give  this  answer,  joyfully,  con- 
fidently, betray  that  they  do  not  understand  the  trend 
of  their  own  times,  and  have  failed  to  grasp  either  the 
moral  or  economic  principles  of  our  social  life.  They 
have  neither  foresight  nor  historic  perception. 

The  answer  is,  Yes.  But  the  horror  of  menial  work 
which  underlies  the  question  is  of  itself  a  revelation 
that  the  mind  of  the  questioner  is  morbid  to  the  last 
degree. 

First.  A  very  great  part  of  this  nasty  work  is  entirely 
unnecessary,  and  when  civilisation  becomes  decent  no  one 
will  have  to  be  asked  to  do  it. 

Second.  Practically  all  the  back-breaking  work  of 
the  world  can  be  done  by  machinery — a  great  deal  more 
than  is  done  now  under  all  our  devices  of  suppression 
of  the  forces  of  nature  by  patents,  monopolies,  shut- 
downs. Machinery  now,  it  is  calculated,  puts  fifty 
artificial  men  by  the  side  of  every  workingman ;  it  could 
as  easily  put  one  hundred  by  his  side. 

Third.  It  will  be  a  benefit,  not  a  harm,  to  all,  and 
especially  to  the  finer  natures,  to  take  part  in  the  coarse 
work  of  the  world,  refined  and  lightened  as  it  will  be. 

Fourth.  The  nobler  natures  scorn  these  exemptions. 
Nothing  is  so  elegant,  says  Emerson,  as  to  wait  on  your- 
self. Civilisation  makes  itself  by  the  progressive  assump- 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY  145 

tion  by  man  of  the  heavy  tasks  once  laid  wholly  on  the 
backs  of  women.  The  Manual  Training  Schools  put 
the  son  of  the  millionaire  by  the  son  of  the  stoker  at  the 
forge  and  the  lathe.  The  sphere  of  manual  training  is 
constantly  enlarging  in  our  scheme  of  education,  and  the 
curse  of  labour  is  fading  away  like  other  superstitions. 
Labour  has  been  a  curse  because  we  have  cursed  the 
labourer.  With  the  abolition  of  slavery  goes  its  philoso- 
phy of  the  curse  of  labour.  Our  modern  joy  of  function, 
effort  and  fruit  brings  the  revelation  that  labour  is  not 
a  curse  unless  creation  is  accursed.  Every  stroke  of 
labour  is  a  stroke  in  the  ever-renewed  task  of  creating  the 
world,  and  man.  The  common  toil  by  which  men  build 
up  the  common  weal  is  a  true  sacrifice — something 
made  sacred. 

It  is  as  imperative  to  put  an  end  to  classes  in  industry 
as  in  the  political  and  social  life  of  the  people.  To 
abolish  the  distinction  between  rich  and  poor,  between 
hand  workers  and  brain  workers,  is  as  real  a  social  need 
of  the  twentieth  century  as  the  abolition  of  that  between 
the  lords  and  serfs  and  master  and  slave  was  in  the 
nineteenth  century.  All  must  be  rich,  as  all  can  be,  and 
all  must  be  both  brain  workers  and  hand  workers,  with 
full  and  free  opportunity  guaranteed  by  the  community 
to  reach  their  highest  possibility.  History  shows  how 
true  it  is  that  those  who  hear  these  sayings  and  do  them 
are  like  the  wise  man  who  built  his  house  on  a  rock, 
while  everyone  who  hears  these  sayings  and  does  them 
not  is  like  unto  the  foolish  man  who  built  his  house  upon 
the  sand.  The  capitalists  who  administer  the  industry 
of  mankind  for  palaces  for  themselves  instead  of  palaces 
for  all  will  find,  are  finding,  that  they  have  built  on  the 
sand  as  surely  as  the  Southern  slaveholder  and  the  feudal 


146  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

baron.  The  houses  that  have  had  firm  foundations  have 
been  those  like  the  family,  the  community,  which  have 
been  built  on  the  plan  that  those  who  take  must  give. 

The  Golden  Rule  is  conservative,  not  radical.  It  is  of 
high  ethical  but  slow  intellectual  intensity.  It  is  prac- 
tical, not  ideal.  To  do  to  others  as  we  would  that  others 
should  do  to  us  is  to  make  fraternal  the  state  of  society  in 
which  we  are,  rather  than  to  advance  out  of  it.  The 
knight  of  the  Middle  Ages  would  be  a  faithful  follower 
of  the  Golden  Rule  if  he  gave  his  opponent  a  fair  fight 
according  to  the  rules  of  chivalry.  To  kill  fairly  as  he 
would  wish  to  be  killed — that  would  be  all  he  would  get 
out  of  the  Golden  Rule.  He  would  never  dream  of 
abolishing  the  tournament  any  more  than  a  Frederick 
the  Great  would  interpret  it  as  a  demand  that  he  give 
up  war.  The  Golden  Rule  inculcates  that  we  are  to 
give  everyone  the  benefit  of  our  present  conception,  not 
that  we  are  to  seek  better  conceptions.  It  is  the  maxim 
of  the  peacemaker,  not  of  the  reformer.  It  is  the  law- 
giver of  an  "ought,"  but  not  of  the  highest  "ought." 
It  says  we  ought  to  give  others  what  we  ask  of  them,  but 
it  stops  short  of  saying  that  we  ought  neither  to  ask 
nor  give  such  things  as  tournaments,  duels,  stock  ex- 
changes, land  monopolies.  The  Golden  Rule  tunes  its 
world  up  to  the  pitch  of  brotherliness,  but  it  leaves  to 
innovating  minds  the  task  of  conceiving  and  bringing 
about  a  better  world  for  the  brothers  to  share.  Jesus, 
who  gave  the  Golden  Rule  its  last  touch,  did  not  condemn 
slavery.  The  Golden  Rule  is  the  ethics  of  the  heart; 
there  must  also  be  what  Salter  in  his  "Ethical  Religion" 
finely  calls  the  ethics  of  the  intellect. 

The  social  problem  of  any  period  will  be  found  to 
divide  itself  into  two  parts.  First,  within  the  frontiers 
drawn  by  the  ruling  ideals  to  bring  the  people  into  a 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY        147 

brotherly  practise  of  the  ideals.  Second,  to  change  the 
ideals.  In  the  competitive  business  world  of  the  past 
century  the  aspirations  have  been  of  "making  money," 
"winning  a  way,"  "going  to  the  top,"  "business  success," 
"buying  cheap,  selling  dear."  These  rules  of  the  game 
and  the  game  itself  have  been  as  religiously  accepted  as 
true  and  good  as  the  tournament  in  its  day.  Within 
the  area  of  this  public  opinion  the  spokesmen  of  the 
Golden  Rule,  the  preachers,  the  political  economists, 
the  legislators,  have  insisted  that  the  game  be  played 
fraternally,  but  they  do  not  question  the  game.  They  say 
to  the  competitive  millions:  Do  as  you  would  be  done 
by,  Give  good  measure,  Work  faithfully,  Pay  the  living 
wage,  Share  profits,  Arbitrate,  Abolish  sweating  and 
child  labour,  Recognise  trade-unions,  Give  the  eight- 
hours'  day.  To  these  people  the  Golden  Rule  could  not 
mean  the  abolition  of  the  competitive  system,  because  they 
believe  the  competitive  system  is  good.  It  is  not  the 
Golden  Rule  calls  them  to  the  adoption  of  the  co-operative 
system.  Not  until  some  other  influence  has  made  them 
see  that  co-operation  is  better  than  competition  does  the 
Golden  Rule  acquire  jurisdiction.  Then  it  says,  Co- 
operate with  others  if  you  would  have  others  co-operate 
with  you.  The  Golden  Rule  is  a  law,  and  that  is  true 
of  this  law  which  is  true  of  all  laws.  Its  function  is  to 
enforce  a  pre-existing  conscience.  It  does  not  lead  but 
follow ;  it  is  second,  not  first.  It  does  not  create  the  new 
conscience,  it  only  applies  it.  More  searching,  more 
holy  than  the  Golden  Rule  is  that  which  commands  us 
to  inquire  if  what  we  desire  for  ourselves  and  others  is 
a  right  desire.  Its  law  is,  Do  what  you  ought,  not  Do 
what  you  would,  whether  for  yourself  or  for  others. 

But  the  Golden  Rule,   as  our  quotations  show,   was 
evolving  even  as  it  was  being  uttered.     It  grew  from  an 


148  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

exhortation  to  love  thy  neighbour,  that  is,  the  brother 
Jew,  or  the  brother  Chinaman,  or  brother  Buddhist,  into 
one  to  love  all  men  as  thyself.  It  grew  from  an  exhorta- 
tion to  love  others  as  thyself  into  the  far  finer  word  to 
love  "as  I  have  loved  you,"  that  is,  perfectly.  This 
is  made  definite  in  one  of  its  latest  versions,  where  we  are 
told  that  to  love  as  the  Father  loves  is  to  keep  His  com- 
mandments, and  His  commandments  are  not  grievous. 
Translated  into  every-day  secular  speech,  this  means 
that  the  law  of  love  is  that  all  are  to  seek  the  full  develop- 
ment of  all.  "Love  is  energy  of  life,"  and  it  sets  to 
work  the  powers  of  everyone  to  create  in  order  to  realise 
for  all  their  highest  possibilities  of  progress.  Thus 
understood  in  its  final  form,  the  Golden  Rule  reaches  the 
ethical  expression  it  lacked  in  its  earlier  shapes ;  and  in 
its  union  of  loving  and  keeping  the  commandments 
adjures  us  to  do  as  we  ought,  not  as  we  would.  But 
when  in  obedience  to  the  new  conscience  this  rule,  Do 
as  you  ought,  becomes  the  law  of  a  new  perception, 
like  the  voices  rising  in  the  midst  of  slavery  demanding 
emancipation,  the  Golden  Rule  becomes  an  explosive 
where  it  had  been  a  cement.  It  disassociates  that  which 
it  had  associated.  Its  old  order  begins  to  break  up, 
and  a  new  order  begins  to  form.  In  every  society  and 
every  age  this  dissolution  and  reunion  can  be  seen  in 
operation  around  every  "living"  question  as  a  vortex. 

That  feeling  in  your  breast  which  you  believe  to  be 
most  peculiarly  and  privately  your  own  you  may  be 
sure  is  the  very  one  which  is  universal  among  men. 
The  appetites  for  power  which  the  strong  man,  the 
capitalist,  would  persuade  himself  are  his  distinction  are 
precisely  those  which  are  felt  by  his  fellow-men.  So 
horrible  is  the  very  thought  to  the  capitalist  that  others 
may  do  to  him  as  he  is  doing  to  others  that  every  once 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY        149 

in  a  while  we  read  in  the  papers  of  someone  who  goes 
to  the  madhouse,  or  commits  suicide,  or,  almost  worse, 
lives  tortured  in  the  horror  of  his  fears  that  he  and  his 
family  are  going  to  the  poorhouse.  This  panic  the 
rich  live  in  is  the  proof  beyond  doubt  that  they  have 
not  done  to  others  as  they  would  that  others  should  do  to 
them.  Their  apprehensive  life  is  the  confession  of  this 
sin,  and  the  prophecy  of  the  punishment  from  which  the 
true  gods  never  release  anyone.  "Fear,"  says  Emerson, 
"  is  the  herald  of  all  revolutions.  One  thing  he  teaches, 
that  there  is  rottenness  where  he  appears.  Our  property 
is  timid,  our  laws  are  timid,  our  cultivated  classes  are 
timid.  Fear  for  ages  has  boded  and  mowed  and  gibbered 
over  government  and  property.  That  obscene  bird  is 
not  there  for  nothing.  He  indicates  great  wrongs  which 
must  be  righted." 

Piracy  was  the  first  form  of  commerce.  Our  industrial 
war  and  piracy  are  also  rudiments  out  of  which  will  come 
the  industrial  peace  we  wait  for.  The  Germany  of 
Frederick  William  III.,  Stein  and  Hardenburg,  emanci- 
pated its  serfs  because  its  enemy  Napoleon  had  an  army 
of  free  men,  and  he  could  be  met  only  by  a  free  people 
in  arms.  The  passion  of  getting  is  not  to  be  eradicated, 
but  it  is  to  take  its  next  step  and  learn  that  for  the 
would-be  getter  to  destroy  those  who  can  give  is  to 
destroy  himself,  and  that  the  only  lasting  way  to  get 
is  to  give.  By  this  philosophy  the  pirate  became  the 
merchant,  and  Germany  freed  herself  of  the  conqueror 
by  freeing  her  own  people.  At  the  present  moment  our 
industrial  life  is  a  life  of  war.  There  is  not  yet  indus- 
trially an  American  people,  or  an  English  people,  nor 
any  other  people,  for  there  is  no  industrial  peace.  But 
the  same  creative  power  in  mankind  which  has  begun 
these  societies  will  continue  them.  This  creative  power 


1 5o  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

will  extend  the  partial  peace  of  politics  beyond  the 
territorial  borders  of  our  different  countries,  and  give 
us  the  European  peace,  then  the  world  peace.  It  will 
give  us,  in  industry,  the  peace  which  is  now  the  great 
aspiration  as  it  is  the  great  need  of  the  people.  The 
distresses  of  the  industrial  world  are  like  those  of  a 
country  ravaged  by  foreign  invasion  and  domestic 
insurrection.  Millions  are  without  work;  millions  who 
are  making  daily  bread  do  not  get  daily  bread;  hardly 
anyone  knows  what  to  count  upon  as  to  certainty  of 
employment  or  of  subsistence ;  the  people  create  property 
only  to  see  it  pass  to  others ;  there  is  famine ;  families  are 
torn  apart;  there  is,  in  the  unnecessary  death  rates,  a 
greater  mortality  than  that  of  battles,  and  a  greater 
maiming  of  limb  by  the  machinery  of  peace  than  by  that 
of  war ;  and  cyclones  of  passion  tear  their  way  across  the 
surface  of  society.  This  is  war.  The  industry  and 
finance  and  trade  which  are  operated  by  the  motive  of 
getting  rich — which  means  precisely  to  get  more  than 
others,  and  to  get  from  others,  and  to  get  without  giving 
the  equivalent — is  piracy.  War  has  had  its  function  in 
social  development.  The  great  terror  that  blackens 
the  sky  of  the  people  to-day  is  poverty.  War  slays  its 
thousands,  but  poverty  its  tens  of  thousands.  War 
draws  our  blood  once  in  a  while,  but  poverty  never 
lets  go  its  killing  hand.  The  fear  of  poverty  is  a  haunting 
panic  that  clutches  at  the  hearts  of  even  the  well-to-do. 
Poverty  lines  the  path  of  life  with  ambuscades  of  every 
evil  known  to  humanity — ignorance,  disease,  hatred, 
fear,  slavery,  death — even  dishonour.  Poverty  is  the 
greatest  weapon  to-day  in  the  armory  of  tyranny.  It 
does  for  the  riders  of  the  beridden  classes  what  their 
swords  did  for  the  Spartan  youth  in  holding  the  Helots 
down.  In  every  banking  parlour  you  can  hear  it 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  INDUSTRY          151 

argued  that  the  people  must  be  kept  down,  since  only 
thus  will  they  be  virtuous  and  society  safe.  But  the 
same  theory  and  practice  of  human  nature  which  has 
discovered  that  horses  can  be  trained  better  by  not 
being  "broken,"  and  that  property  can  be  brought  into 
better  respect  if  every  petty  larceny  is  not  made  a  hang- 
ing offence,  is  discovering  that  there  is  a  better  path  to 
virtue  and  prosperity  through  expression  than  repression, 
through  love  than  fear,  through  hope  than  despair. 
The  ancients  believed  that  the  people  could  be  made  to 
work  only  through  slavery;  we  believe  that  they  can 
be  made  to  work  only  through  poverty.  Such  loyalty 
as  that  of  a  free  people  is  not  possible  among  the  Persians 
or  Russians,  held  subject  by  force,  and  it  is  beginning  to 
be  seen  that  people  work  well  only  as  they  work  freely. 
When  poverty  is  abolished,  then  the  production  of 
wealth  in  the  world  will  really  begin.  When  men  can 
put  forth  their  energies  without  compulsion,  secure  that 
the  fruits  shall  be  theirs,  when  every  faculty  is  loosed  and 
inspired  by  hope,  joy,  faith  and  love,  we  shall  see  for  the 
first  time  a  Commonwealth. 

If  the  multitudes  of  the  business  world  are  to  become 
an  association,  instead  of  dissolving  into  a  self -destroying 
mob,  they  must  group  themselves  in  strict  observance 
of  the  Golden  Rule  as  the  supreme  law  of  practicable 
society.  How  must  industry  be  organised  under  this 
law?  Is  it  enough  that  the  employer  shall  provide 
model  conditions  in  the  factory,  or  mine,  or  field;  shall 
share  profits;  shall  live  among  the  workmen? 

That  is  necessary,  but  that  is  not  enough.  The 
employer — the  employing  class,  or  society  for  them— 
must  ask  and  answer  this  question.  What  would  I  like 
in  their  place?  That  can  be  answered  by  another 
question:  What  do  I  like?  What  the  employer  does 


1 52  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

like  is  to  be  the  employer;  to  organise;  to  be  boss;  to 
direct;  to  make  money;  to  have  distinction.  He  likes 
these  because  he  is  human.  His  employees,  as  they  are 
human,  would  like  them  also.  The  Golden  Rule  in 
politics  says  that  what  we  like  we  must  give  our  fellows. 
If  we  like  freedom,  we  must  give  freedom.  The  Golden 
Rule  has  no  different  answer  to  give  for  the  government 
of  industry.  If  you  want  independence,  power,  wealth, 
luxury,  leisure,  you  must  give  them. 

By  this  Golden  Rule  of  giving  to  all  what  you  get  from 
all,  we  have  created  all  we  have  of  enduring  establish- 
ments of  political  life.  Only  by  this  rule  can  we  settle 
ourselves  in  institutions  of  industry  that  will  endure. 
Through  the  constant  demolition  and  reconstruction  of 
social  institutions,  through  all  the  centuries,  one  thing 
hasl  never  been  destroyed — the  will  of  men  to  abolish 
one  by  one  the  tenures  which  interfered  with  the  mutual- 
ities of  life  together,  and  to  create  one  by  one  the  institu- 
tions of  reciprocity. 

The  genius  to  unite  is  what  is  needed  now.  The 
Time  and  the  word  wait  on  him.  In  the  era  of  dis- 
cussion, striking  out  of  new  ideas,  criticism,  the  genius 
of  disunion  was  the  ruling  spirit,  necessarily.  What 
was  wanted  was  the  differentiation  of  thought  to  the 
uttermost  possible.  But  now  deeds,  not  ideas,  are  to  be 
the  events.  Thinkers  may  separate;  doers  must  co- 
operate. We  have  to  begin,  now,  to  apply  what  is  ap- 
plicable of  ideas,  schemes,  consciences,  so  lavishly 
elaborated  by  the  poets,  reformers,  seers,  whose  era  of 
wonderful  and  alarum  utterance  is  just  drawing  to  its 
close.  Our  day  dawns  to  call  us  to  do.  Therefore, 
workers  of  all  nations  and  all  schools,  Unite!  The  world 
belongs  to  those  who  unite. 


CHAPTER  VII 

NEW  CONSCIENCE  TRANSFORMING   POLITICS — KILLING  THE 
PARTY   SPIRIT 

THE  abolition  of  slavery  has  never  stopped,  the  creation 
of  the  republic  has  never  been  intermitted.  There  was 
a  time  when  to  spare  the  conquered  by  enslaving  instead 
of  slaughtering  them  was  obedience  to  the  Golden 
Rule.  That  step  up  was  no  sooner  made  than  the 
Golden  Rule  was  revised  to  demand  emancipation. 
That  done,  the  unresting  spirit  of  Redemption  puts 
forward  their  claim  to  citizenship.  Citizenship  got, 
the  citizen  must  have  the  Commonwealth.  Beyond 
the  Commonwealth  lies  unending  a  line  of  ascent.  The 
persistence  of  the  Golden  Rule  in  its  progress  toward 
supreme  jurisdiction  can  now  be  regarded  as  a  verified 
scientific  fact  in  the  political  history  of  the  race.  But 
political  is  but  one  department  of  social;  industrial  is 
also  social.  The  law  of  the  one  must  be  the  law  of  the 
other. 

Hundreds  of  millions  of  people  by  common  consent  have 
adopted  as  the  rule  of  rules,  naming  it — the  Golden 
Rule — that  they  are  to  do  to  others  as  they  would  have 
others  do  to  them.  The  exhortations  of  Confucius  and 
of  Buddha  are  so  close  to  this  that  it  may  be  correctly 
described  as  the  chosen  ideal  of  the  vast  majority  of 
mankind.  To  this  they  are  day  by  day  bending  their 
lives.  This  by  a  very  real  though  unorganised  plebiscite 
they  have  adopted  as  the  written  constitution  of  human 
society.  This  they  have  put  into  action  in  a  thousand 

153 


iS4  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

institutions,  private  and  public,  domestic  and  social, 
local,  national  and  international. 

We  create  political  life  and  get  political  rights  by 
giving  others  what  we  want  from  them.  Protection  from 
invasion  or  insurrection,  our  vote,  free  speech,  public 
education,  justice,  parks,  water,  all  the  advantages  of  that 
co-operation  we  call  government,  we  get  by  giving. 

If  you  would  have  all  others  give  you  free  speech,  give 
all  others  free  speech.  If  you  would  have  all  men  tax 
themselves  to  defend  you  from  invasion,  tax  yourself 
to  defend  them.  If  you  would  that  others  should  build 
your  pleasure  grounds  by  the  seashore,  among  the  fells, 
along  the  river  banks,  that  kings  might  envy,  pay  a  park 
tax  for  such  pleasure  grounds  for  all.  In  fine,  continue 
further  in  this  path  of  "Love  one  another"  which  has 
brought  you  thus  far. 

It  is  the  ten  commandments  of  good  manners,  of 
family  life,  of  the  law  of  contracts — which  demand  free 
parties  and  full  consideration  of  the  political  economy, 
which  holds  that  service  must  repay  service  of  the  state, 
which  taxes  all  for  all.  Both  Franklin  and,  one  hundred 
years  later,  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough  are  credited 
with  saying  that  the  practice  of  Christianity  and  the 
existence  of  our  society  are  incompatible.  Of  course  the 
perfect  practice  of  Christianity  and  our  present  social 
system  could  not  co-exist  a  second.  But  another  thing 
is  also  as  true  and  as  well  worth  dwelling  on,  for  the 
building  up  of  the  people  in  that  belief  in  themselves 
without  which  they  will  .never  accomplish  anything: 
Unless  we  were  doing  unto  others,  in  a  multitude  of 
things,  as  we  would  that  others  should  do  unto  us, 
unless  we  were  loving  each  other,  in  many  ways,  our 
society  could  never  have  been  built  up  to  what  it  is,  and 
could  not  now  stand  a  day. 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS  155 

We  discover  by  this  examination  that  the  Golden  Rule 
is  pre-eminently  the  working  rule  by  which  men  are 
shaping  their  lives  together.  The  Golden  Rule  is  the  me- 
chanics of  love.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is 
a  political  application  of  it.  When  the  question  is  how 
people  shall  get  their  letters  carried,  they  form  themselves 
into  the  people,  establish  the  postoffice.  The  postoffice 
is  one  of  the  institutions  of  the  Golden  Rule,  and  as  this 
is  the  code  of  love  it  can  accurately  be  said  that  organised 
love  is  our  letter  carrier.  Our  problem  is  not  to  show 
that  love  is  the  law.  That  has  always  been  admitted. 
What  is  to  be  the  next  harmonisation?  is  our  question. 
Men  being  able  to  associate  only  by  obedience  to  the 
laws  of  association,  the  Golden  Rule  is  the  supreme  law 
of  association. 

We  speak  of  political  peace,  but  the  phrase  is  mis- 
leading. The  life  political  is  peace  compared  with  riot 
and  private  war,  but  the  methods  of  government  by 
parties  are  essentially  belligerent,  the  tactics  of  hate 
which  seeks  good  for  self  out  of  injury  to  others.  That 
they  do  not  shed  blood  does  not  make  them  any  the 
less  war.  In  politics,  too,  the  people  are  sighing  for 
peace.  They  are  as  weary  of  the  political  campaign  as  of 
the  industrial  competition.  This  is  apparent  in  the 
thought  of  the  people  on  every  side,  here  and  in  Europe. 
It  is  one  of  the  keynotes  of  the  English  co-operative 
movement,  the  worldly  success  of  which  has  been  as 
remarkable  as  the  intensity  and  radicalism  of  the  hope 
of  its  founders,  that  their  method  might  prove  to  be 
the  salvation  of  society.  One  of  the  leaders  of  the 
movement  concludes  his  important  work  on  "  Co-operative 
Production"  with  these  words  on  "the  best  method  of 
accelerating  progress":  "I  think  we  ought,"  he  says, 
"  as  citizens  actively  do,  engage  ourselves  in  the  conduct 


iS6  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

both  of  the  local  and  imperial  government  with  the 
object  of  gradually  brushing  away  as  an  obsolete  piece 
of  machinery  the  method  of  governing  the  people  by 
means  of  political  partisanship.  .  .  .  The  cry  foi 
'  Bread-and-Butter  politics '  is  really  the  popular  rendering 
of  the  view  that  all  government  should  be  a  system  of  co- 
operation for  mutual  benefit."  In  these  words  we  have 
one  of  those  intimations  of  the  future  which  are  struck 
prophetic  out  of  the  common  sense  of  the  people  by  the 
hard  knocks  of  their  experience — the  most  fertile  source 
of  true  ideals.  This  purpose  of  using  politics  to  put 
an  end  to  politics — "of  engaging  in  the  conduct  of 
government  ...  to  brush  away  the  method  of 
governing  by  political  partisanship" — is  as  yet  felt 
among  the  people  only  in  its  first  form  of  profound 
discontent  and  discouragements  with  party  methods  and 
results,  but  this  is  its  first  form.  The  most  advanced 
political  organisation  of  the  English  workingmen  at 
this  moment  has  as  one  of  its  chief  objects  to  put  an 
end  to  party  government.  Its  writers  and  speakers 
constantly  recur  to  this  theme.  This  idea  is  not  yet 
consciously  expressed  with  the  same  clearness  among 
American  workingmen,  but  their  hopelessness  of  the 
appeal  to  political  action  for  the  redress  of  their  grievances 
arises  from  distrust  of  political  parties.  In  vain  do  the 
newspapers  and  preachers  and  reformers  call  upon  the 
people  to  use  their  party  machinery  to  drive  corruption- 
ists  and  monopolists  out  of  power.  In  vain  do  enthu- 
siasts call  conventions  and  organise  new  political  parties. 
The  people  in  search  of  reform  will  neither  go  to  the 
primaries  nor  seek  control  of  the  controlling  organisations 
of  the  existing  parties.  To  use  a  phrase  of  Napoleon's, 
they  appear  to  have  become  "exhausted  by  political 
passions."  The  lesson  taught  by  all  the  past  attempts 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS  157 

at  popular  government,  expounded  by  all  the  anxious 
and  sympathetic  lovers  of  freedom  from  Aristotle  to 
Washington,  has  been  taught  again.  The  first  steps  in 
progress  have  been  made,  but  the  progress  has  been  more 
in  the  destruction  of  the  old  evils  of  feudalism  and 
privilege  than  in  the  building  of  that  which  can  perma- 
nently take  their  place.  Plutarch  tells  us  in  his  "Lives" 
how  the  Greeks  used  to  elect  their  Senators  by  the  voice 
of  the  people.  The  judges  of  election  were  shut  up  in  a 
room  overlooking  the  market  place  where  the  citizens 
were  assembled.  One  after  another  the  "favourite 
sons"  were  nominated  by  their  spokesmen,  and  their 
party  in  the  market  place  vociferously  seconded  their 
nominations.  The  judges  above  kept  careful  note  of 
the  volume,  earnestness  and  intensity  of  the  approving 
cries  given  each  candidate.  When  the  "returns  were  all 
in"  the  judges  declared  him  elected  who  had,  according 
to  their  ears,  been  given  the  best  cheers.  This  seems 
preposterous  to  us,  but  the  Greeks  who  chose  their 
rulers  by  this  gabble  of  the  rabble  are  ranked  by  Galton 
as  two  grades  above  us  in  civilisation,  or  as  much  as  we 
are  above  the  Africans.  This  method  of  theirs  does  not 
seem  more  absurd  to  us  than  to  our  successors  in  civilisa- 
tion will  seem  ours  of  selecting  the  men  who  are  to  make 
streets,  build  waterworks,  administer  public  sanitation, 
conduct  national  defence,  finance  and  all  the  other 
functions  of  the  common  welfare.  Anyone  who  has  sat 
in  the  quadrennial  convention  of  one  of  our  national 
parties  for  the  nomination  of  Presidential  candidates, 
has  seen  the  proceedings  suspended  for  hours  while 
in  the  packed  galleries  the  factions  of  the  rival  candidates 
howled  themselves  hoarse  in  alternating  competitive 
choruses  to  impress  upon  the  delegates  below  the  superior 
popularity  of  this  and  that  candidate.  Thus  American 


i58  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

democracy  illustrates  the  methods  of  the  Grecian. 
Our  customs  of  stump-speaking,  magnetism,  partisan 
editorials,  stampeding  conventions,  mass  meetings,  firing 
the  popular  heart,  availability,  and  secret  cabals  and 
selfish  syndicates  working  the  puppet  show  from  behind, 
are  not,  when  one  comes  to  think  about  them,  vastly 
superior  to  the  older  Greek  suffrage  by  shoutings.  Our 
methods  put  the  discharge  of  duties  of  vital  public 
importance  into  the  hands  of  passion,  prejudice,  whim 
and  trimming,  when  the  demand  is  for  experience, 
courage,  genius  and  character.  In  applied  .  common 
sense,  the  government  of  our  public  institutions  is  in 
this  below  the  government  of  our  private  enterprises. 
How  long  would  our  banks  and  corporations  last  if  they 
chose  "magnetic"  men  by  political  campaign  methods 
for  cashiers  and  treasurers?  Our  political  methods  in 
truth  represent  the  reaction  against  the  preceding 
systems  which  they  overthrew.  These  denied  the  right 
of  the  people  to  any  voice.  In  escaping  from  this  re- 
pression the  people  have  swung  to  the  opposite  extreme, 
that  the  voice  is  everything.  The  people  are  fast  learning 
by  its  results  that  this  system  does  not  express  the 
will  of  the  people.  It  nullifies  the  will  of  the  people. 
To  make  it  necessary  that  the  people  should  say  their 
say  about  all  the  policies  and  all  the  officials  ends  in 
making  it  impossible  for  them  to  say  anything.  The 
voter  who  has  his  living  to  make  cannot  spare  the  time 
to  master  politics.  The  ballot  becomes  a  blanket  sheet, 
and  to  find  out  the  merits  of  the  myriad  candidates  the 
bearings  of  the  issues  and  the  requirements  of  the  multi- 
tude of  officers  is  beyond  the  citizen.  Only  the  specialist 
can  achieve  this,  and  only  the  specialist  does,  but  the 
specialist  thus  far  has  achieved  it  for  the  benefit  of  a 
clique  who  have  obtained  possession  of  the  government 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS  159 

with  all  the  perquisites  of  patronage,  contracts,  privileges, 
jobs,  boodle  and  dignities,  so  that  the  oftener  the  people 
are  called  upon  to  caucus,  to  delegate,  to  vote,  the  more 
completely  are  their  functions  abandoned.  From  the 
ward  gang  to  the  national  ring  this  has  been  the  evolution 
of  party  politics.  In  America,  where  the  public  affairs 
are  the  vastest,  public  questions  the  most  intricate,  and 
the  public  hand,  theoretically,  is  on  the  rudder,  the 
power  of  private  "rings"  is  greatest.  The  average 
American  citizen  has,  and  knows  he  has,  nothing  to  say 
about  who  shall  lead  his  party  or  what  the  party  shall 
do  when  in  office.  The  administration  of  our  parties, 
and  hence  of  our  state  and  national  governments,  is 
carried  on  by  cliques  for  the  benefit  of  cliques.  The 
people  are  not  in  it.  The  real  governors  of  the  Govern- 
ment of  this  country  are  neither  the  people  nor  their 
official  representatives,  but  the  agents  of  private  interests 
which,  through  their  "legal  representatives"  and  their 
lobbyists,  prepare  the  tariffs,  subsidies,  contracts,  grants, 
exemptions,  appointments  for  office,  and  see  to  their 
enactment  and  confirmation.  This  is  not  the  will  of  the 
people.  It  does  not  result  from  the  corruption  of  the 
people.  "The  people  are  uncorrupted,"  said  Stein, 
writing  of  the  selfishness  and  rottenness  of  public  opinion 
in  Berlin  in  1808,  and  this  is  always  true  of  the  people. 
The  people  cannot  be  corrupted.  They  are  not  too 
good,  but  there  are  too  many  of  them  and  the  public 
interests  are  much  too  great  for  the  sinister  special 
interests.  However  lumberingly,  the  public  does  in  the 
long  run  outreach  the  private.  We  are  only  slowly 
evolving  the  machinery  for  a  direct  expression  of  the 
people's  will. 

It  was  a  great  stroke  in  the  road  of  society  to  invent 
representative   government,   political  historians  tell  us. 


160  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

It  permitted  society  to  expand  not  only  politically  but 
in  all  ways  beyond  the  limits  of  the  voice  of  the  tribal 
herdsman  of  the  day's  journey.  It  has  made  the  modern 
state  possible.  Another  great  invention  in  the  machinery 
of  representative  government  is  taking  place  at  the 
present  moment,  that  which  is  now  seen  in  Switzerland,  by 
which  in  a  large  society  of  the  modern  world  the  govern- 
ment of  millions  is  again  made  audible  and  by  all,  brought 
again  within  the  voice  of  the  herdsman  and  again  within 
the  limits  of  a  day's  journey. 

Through  the  Initiative  and  Referendum  the  voice  of 
the  people  of  the  largest  state  can  again  be  heard  as 
clearly  as  in  the  market  place  of  Athens.  It  enables 
the  Town  Meeting  to  put  on  national  or  even  imperial 
purposes  and  yet  remain  a  Town  Meeting ;  and  in  Switzer- 
land we  have  seen  it  evolved  naturally  and  easily  out  of 
the  Town  Meeting.  The  most  interesting  thing  about 
Switzerland  is  that  there  we  see  the  people  continually 
changing  their  fundamental  law — the  Constitution — to 
make  it  fit  the  changed  circumstances  of  their  life. 
The  period  which  elapses  between  the  proposal  to  change 
the  Swiss  Constitution  and  the  change  itself  is  only  a 
few  months.  This  telephonic  current  of  response  to  the 
people's  wishes  as  to  the  provisions  of  the  Constitution  is 
a  far  higher  exhibition  of  democratic  ability  than  anything 
to  be  seen  in  the  field  of  constitutional  change  either 
in  England  or  the  United  States.  New  Zealand  has 
advanced  beyond  Switzerland  in  the  economic  value  of 
some  of  its  changes  like  the  unemployed  acts  but  in  no 
country  in  the  world  is  the  supreme  will  of  the  people 
so  quickly  and  wholly  the  law  of  the  land  as  in  Switzerland. 
The  Swiss  politicians  under  the  referendum  say:  "All 
rests  with  the  people,"  and  they  skulk  the  campaign  when 
the  people  debate  their  laws.  Through  these  debates  the 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN   POLITICS  161 

people  attain  their  political  efficiency.  The  men  and 
women  in  the  towns  are  the  equal  of  those  anywhere,  and 
on  the  average  are  certainly  superior  to  the  English  or 
any  other  nation,  but  the  people  in  the  country  certainly 
do  not  seem  naturally  capable  of  understanding  such 
questions  as  these.  It  is  the  debates  which  teach  them. 
The  laws  are  given  to  them  to  study.  Perhaps  not  one  in 
five  hundred  studies  them  from  the  printed  page,  but 
they  hold  meetings  and  hear  them  discussed,  and  this 
way  gives  them  the  most  serious  study. 

It  used  to  take  the  Athenians  all  day  and  every  day 
to  settle  their  few  political  questions  by  the  public  and 
private  discussions  in  the  market  place.  And  they 
had  to  discuss  no  labour  legislation,  no  control  of  corpora- 
tions, almost  no  public  works,  not  one  in  a  hundred  of 
the  matters  which  pass  before  our  municipal  councillors. 
Our  voters  have  in  their  hands  not  only  city  government, 
but  county,  state,  national,  all  complicated  with  huge 
responsibilities  of  social  life  of  which  the  ancients  had  no 
inkling.  As  a  mere  question  of  physical  powers,  it  is 
beyond  the  citizen  to  do  his  duty  in  this  labyrinthine 
world.  He  must  let  it  go,  and  he  does  let  it  go.  He 
betakes  himself  of  stern  necessity  to  making  a  living  for 
himself  and  his  family,  leaving  politics  to  the  politicians. 
But  the  plain  man  knows  well  enough  that  day  by  day 
the  politicians  are  taking  away  this  living  he  is  trying 
to  make,  and  that  the  sure  end  of  it  all  will  be  that  he 
will  have  to  turn  at  bay  and  do  to  the  politicians  as  he 
has  always  had  to  do  to  the  monopolisers  of  power.  But 
how  ?  He  does  not  yet  know.  Meanwhile  he  listens  with 
impassive  discouragement  to  the  exhortations  of  the 
conservative  "to  do  his  duty  at  the  polls,"  and  to  the 
projects  of  the  partisan  radicals  for  giving  him  by  count- 
less municipalisations  and  nationalisations  ten  times  as 


MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

much  politics  to  attend  to  as  now.  In  Germany,  where 
the  people  have  not  been  "  exhausted  by  political  passions  " 
and  by  political  overwork,  there  is  the  possibility  of 
popular  enthusiasm  for  a  socialist  campaign.  But  the 
Germans,  politically,  are  beginners;  we  in  America  are 
post-graduates.  We  have  given  government  by  party 
politics  a  century's  trial,  and  the  common  sense  of  the 
people,  unexpressed  though  it  is  as  yet,  knows  at  bottom 
that  it  has  broken  down.  The  apathy  of  the  voter  is 
paired  with  the  inefficiency  of  the  office  holders  as  evidence 
of  this.  Government  by  party  politics  makes  it  im- 
possible for  this  country  to  have  any  settled  financial, 
tariff  or  social  policy.  Party  government  is  a  sure 
instrument  for  those  who  wish  to  prevent  the  use  by  the 
people  of  their  governmental  rights  to  help  themselves. 
A  private  individual  who  would  change  front  in  his 
business  as  our  Government  does  in  its  currency,  its 
foreign  trade,  its  banking,  would  have  a  short  career. 
Nothing  but  the  prodigious  riches  flowing  from  union 
enables  the  nation  to  stand  the  drain  of  the  waste  of 
wealth  by  this  continual  building  up  to  pull  down. 
Party  politics  give  the  English  landed  interests  all  the 
help  they  want  to  prevent  the  reforms  of  English  land 
abuses.  Because  of  party  politics  the  Tory  and  Liberal 
humanitarians  of  Great  Britain  cannot  get  together  to 
end  the  reign  of  terror  of  the  Turk.  Several  years  ago 
M.  de  Laveleye  declared  that  the  Parliamentary  system 
was  working  defectively  almost  everywhere,  even  in 
England,  and  Eugene  d'Eichthal  in  his  recent  book 
shows  that  this  is  true  still  more  to-day  of  France.  What 
the  situation  is  in  America  we  can  see  in  the  deadlock  of 
reform  in  every  common  council,  state  capitol,  and  at 
Washington. 

The  highways  of  the  great  West,  the  Pacific  roads,  are 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS  163 

able  to  use  party  politics  as  they  wish  to  obtain  unearned 
appropriations  of  public  lands,  and  to  complete  their 
power  to  charge  monopoly  prices  for  moving  the  people 
and  their  products.  But  the  people,  to  whom  the 
Government  belongs,  cannot  use  the  Government  to  pro- 
tect themselves  against  these  highwaymen.  All  they 
can  do  is  to  watch  from  their  homes  the  cunning  manipu- 
lations of  the  experts  at  Washington.  To  cope  with 
these  special  interests  is  beyond  the  time  or  the  ability 
of  the  people.  The  Government  is  "their  Government," 
but  it  has  become  so  highly  specialised  that  only  special- 
ists can  operate  it.  Government  by  party  politics  has 
become  government  by  lobby  and  by  deadlock.  To 
accomplish  only  the  legislation  that  is  wanted  by  parasitic 
interests;  to  prevent  all  government  for  the  benefit  of 
the  governed ;  that  is  the  play  to  be  seen  at  Washington, 
London,  Paris  and  in  the  city  halls.  For  how  many 
weary  years  have  the  reformers  of  England  been  working 
through  the  laws  to  replace  upon  the  land  some  of  the 
tillers  who  have  been  driven  off.  When  they  get  their 
allotment  act  through  Parliament  it  has  been  hamstrung 
by  "amendments,"  and  is  never  able  to  do  its  work. 
In  old  Rome,  where  they  had  less  politics,  they  did 
succeed  in  redistributing  a  large  part  of  the  public  lands 
among  the  people.  But  in  England  and  America  there 
is  no  present  hope  that  this  would  be  possible.  Govern- 
ment by  party  is  not  a  means  of  settling  things ;  it  is  the 
best  of  devices  for  keeping  them  unsettled.  The  party 
in  power  reduces  the  tariff.  The  accident  of  a  reverse  in 
the  general  prosperity  makes  this  party  unpopular. 
No  matter  whether  it  were  responsible  for  the  reverse  or 
not,  out  it  goes.  The  citizen  must  avenge  his  sufferings 
and  losses  on  someone.  The  missile  nearest  to  his  hand 
is  the  ballot,  and  with  it  he  knocks  out  the  administration. 


164 

Then  the  voter  rules?  No,  he  finds  the  new  party  does 
not  reduce  the  tariff.  Government  is  good  in  proportion 
as  it  gives  us  rest  instead  of  change,  peace  instead  of  war. 
We  cannot  do  without  party,  George  William  Curtis 
says.  This  is  true,  in  that  the  people  cannot  surrender 
their  rights  to  self-rule.  But,  as  he  also  says,  party  is 
but  a  means  to  this,  it  it  not  an  end  in  itself.  The 
proposal  to  find  some  better  agent,  if  not  for  all  at  least 
for  the  bulk  of  the  work  now  done  by  party  government, 
is  a  proposal  to  improve  self-government,  not  to  abandon 
it.  Washington  in  his  Farewell  Address  speaks  of  party 
as  a  prophet  who  foresaw  the  harm  that  would  come  by 
party,  and  as  an  observer  who  had  seen  the  damage 
begun.  His  remarks  show  that  his  meditations  had  had 
a  philosophic  depth  and  that  he  had  caught  the  truth 
that  government  by  party  in  the  chronology  of  social 
inventions  is  the  first  instrument  the  people  find  for 
their  opposition  to  government  by  monarchy.  Govern- 
ment by  party  is  the  method  of  resistance  to  government 
by  person.  Government  by  party  has  in  its  very  nature 
something  of  the  uprising,  the  insurrection,  the  tumult. 
It  is  an  assertion  of  the  right  of  the  people  to  change  their 
government;  and  to  change  it  as  often,  if  they  like,  as 
they  change  their  minds.  It  bears  the  marks  of  being 
what  it  is — the  attempt  to  give  order  and  form,  organisa- 
tion, method,  to  the  crowd  who  have  come  together  to 
regain  their  liberties.  It  smacks  in  its  processes  of 
revolution.  The  revolution  has  been  made  peaceful, 
but  it  is  revolution.  The  people  have  the  right  to  have 
a  new  king  every  election  day;  they  have  the  right,  for 
good  cause,  to  impeach  and  depose  their  elected  sovereign. 
They  can  elect  a  high-tariff  Congress  in  1892,  and  in  1894 
elect  a  low-tariff  Congress.  The  people  have  found 
their  will,  and  they  mean  to  use  it.  Manifestly,  all  this 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN   POLITICS  165 

is  but  the  first  enthusiasm  of  escape  from  the  evil  system 
which  altogether  denied  the  will  of  the  people.  When 
the  slave  of  the  South  became  free  and  could  change  his 
domicile  if  he  chose,  he  became  a  passionate  pilgrim  of 
travel.  He  would  go  up  and  down  the  land  just  to  show 
that  he  could  do  so.  As  soon  as  he  earned  a  dollar  in 
one  place  he  spent  it  for  his  railroad  fare  to  the  next  town. 
As  the  Negro  travelled  to  luxuriate  in  his  right  to  change 
his  domicile,  regardless  of  the  fact  that  the  travel  was 
a  waste  and  harm,  so  the  people,  reacting  from  despotic 
control,  have  abandoned  themselves  to  a  riot  and  ecstasy 
of  "liberty"  of  talking,  voting,  running  for  office,  cau- 
cusing, changing  rulers  and  policies,  throwing  public 
improvement;  foreign  relations,  finance  or  any  other 
interest  into  these  hands,  or  those,  or  back  again,  to  be 
well  done,  or  ill  done,  or  not  done  at  all,  for  any  reason 
that  whim,  or  passion,  or  liking,  or  wilfulness,  or  "mag- 
netism," or  the  irritation  of  hard  times  might  suggest, 
or  for  no  reason. 

The  truth  is  that  this  is  the  mere  delirium  of  reaction. 
Washington's  mind  saw  this,  as  he  shows.  "In  govern- 
ment of  a  monarchical  cast,"  he  says,  "patriotism  may 
look  with  indulgence  if  not  with  favour  upon  the  spirit  of 
party."  But  when  the  individual  has  been  multiplied 
by  twenty  millions  there  has  been  no  immunity  gained 
by  the  multitude  from  the  same  laws  of  cause  and  effect 
to  which  the  individual  is  subject.  To  do  as  he  wills, 
to  be  governed  by  resentments,  partialities,  to  sport 
with  his  powers,  to  be  whimsical  where  he  should  be  wise, 
and  changeable  where  he  should  not  change,  to  spend 
because  he  has  the  means,  and  to  do  because  he  has  the 
right — these  are  maxims  fatal  for  the  individual  and 
fatal  for  the  people.  The  famous  language  of  Washington 
with  regard  to  the  danger  of  party  almost  goes  to  the 


i66  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

length  of  declaring  these  evils  to  be  inseparable  from 
party.  The  failure  of  the  American  people  to  escape  the 
evils  of  which  he  warned  them  has  been  clear  enough 
to  acquit  of  extravagance  those  who  step  over  the  small 
gap  in  Washington's  statement  and  declare  with  the 
English  co-operators  and  the  Independent  Labour  Party 
men  that  government  by  party  must  be  brought  to  an 
end. 

"Party,"  George  William  Curtis  says,  "is  ceasing  to 
be  an  agency  of  the  people.  It  is  becoming  the  instru- 
ment of  'the  Machine. ":  Again,  he  describes  it  "as 
merely  a  convenient  but  clumsy  agency  to  promote 
certain  public  objects."  Party  threatens  liberty  in  the 
same  way  that  a  stan'ding  army  does.  It  breeds  a 
servility  to  itself  which  the  heads  of  the  powerful  organ- 
isations are  constantly  tempted  to  use  for  their  own 
selfish  advancement.  Mr.  Curtis  may  be  accepted  as  an 
authority  upon  the  history  of  party  spirit  during  the 
century  that  followed  Washington's  warning,  Starting 
with  everything  that  could  qualify  a  republic  to  control 
its  evil  tendencies,  we  have  failed.  A  survey  of  the 
ravages  of  faction  from  the  first  appearance  of  party 
government  in  the  early  republics  to  the  present  time 
certainly  suggests  strongly  that  there  is  in  the  form  of 
government  by  party  something  radically  defective. 
Not  in  the  foundation  principle  that  it  is  the  welfare  of 
all  which  the  efforts  of  all,  in  government  as  elsewhere, 
must  seek,  and  that  what  this  welfare  is  and  how  to 
get  it  can  be  determined  only  by  the  voice  and  union  of 
all.  Not  in  this  principle  but  in  the  methods  of  its 
application  that  this  knowledge  of  welfare  and  the  ways 
and  means  to  it  is  to  be  got  through  the  struggles  of 
party.  As  the  procedure  of  courts  imitates  the  tactics 
of  individual  combat,  the  methods  of  party  government 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN   POLITICS  167 

are  a  bloodless — almost  always  bloodless — reproduction 
of  those  of  war.  We  speak  of  the  political  campaign, 
party  struggles  for  the  success  of  the  party.  We  have 
thought  that  in  government  as  in  industry  we  could  get 
the  good  of  all  as  the  result  of  the  struggles  of  the  parts. 
We  have  thought  a  selfish  principle  could  lead  us  to 
an  unselfish  consummation.  We  have  thought  there 
was  a  self-acting  beneficence  in  the  world;  that  we  were 
subject  to  "laws,"  and  that  we  must  be  content  to  let 
these  laws  work  themselves  out,  fatalistically  confident 
that  in  the  long  run  all  would  be  well  and  that  the 
glorious  design  of  the  Creator  would  be  accomplished. 
This  has  been  the  fatalism  of  our  past  politics  and  political 
economy.  But  the  new  self-knowledge,  a  wider  science 
and  longer  meditation  is  bringing  us  to  displace  this 
oriental  fatalism  forever  by  a  creative  conception  of  the 
powers  and  destiny  of  man.  The  science  of  society 
is  what  we  make  it.  Political  economy  is  what  we  make 
it.  Politics  is  what  we  make  it.  Under  the  same  sky 
and  on  the  same  soil  and  in  the  same  years  the  Indian 
and  the  white  man  maintain  political  economies  and 
politics  as  distinct  as  the  complexions  of  the  two  races. 
We  ourselves  live  under  two  distinct  polities.  In  the 
one  we  get  our  food  by  making  war  on  the  war  of  weeds  on 
grain,  of  hawks  on  chickens,  of  wolves  on  sheep.  In  the 
other  we  really  live  by  proclaiming  the  peace  of  life 
instead  of  the  struggle  for  life,  and  the  struggle  of  the 
fittest  (fiercest)  to  survive.  We  get  poetry,  art,  beauty, 
happiness,  by  interfering  to  prevent  the  strong  from 
crushing  the  weak  and  proclaiming  the  peace  of  home 
and  fatherland.  These  are  creative  acts.  They  are  the 
interference  of  a  higher  creative  will  with  a  lower;  of  a 
superior  motive  with  an  inferior.  They  are  interferences 
with  "natural  law,"  unscientifically  so  called.!  Do 


1 68  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

not  these  precedents  reveal  a  law  of  effort  which  must  be 
progressively  applied  ?  It  seems  not  to  be  a  mere  straining 
after  analogy  to  say  that  it  is  probable  that  we  can  no 
more  leave  our  political  destinies  to  be  settled  by  the 
struggles  of  political  parties  for  party  advantage  than 
we  can  trust  our  subsistence  to  the  struggles  of  the 
weeds  in  the  plains.  The  voter  uses  the  party  for  his 
gain,  and  the  party  runs  the  government  for  the  benefit 
of  the  party.  This  is  the  universal  motive — selfishness — in 
its  political  expression,  just  as  monopoly  is  the  economic 
consummation  of  the  same  principle  in  industry.  The 
struggles  of  parties  are  theoretically  for  the  good  of  the 
state.  Competition  is,  theoretically,  for  the  wealth  of  all. 
But  practically  the  results  of  the  latter  laissez  faire  have 
been  such  that  modern  civilisation  has  begun  to  move 
with  great  rapidity  toward  a  political  economy  of  co- 
operation. Our  co-operative  stores  are  private,  and  our 
municipal  potato  farms  and  national  insurances  are 
public  milestones  on  the  road  to  public  co-operation. 

The  changes  in  ideals  and  theory  of  life  which  are 
achieving  this  in  the  organisation  of  the  common  toilers 
are  so  deep  that  we  may  count  confidently  on  seeing 
them  revolutionise  all  our  social  life.  Government  by 
the  play  of  self-interest  will  remain  until  industry  by 
self-interest  be  given  up.  Striking  confirmation  of  this 
is  in  the  evidence  we  have  shown  that  the  co-operators 
and  the  socialists  are  independently  and  spontaneously 
agitating  for  the  abolition  of  party  government. 

A  composite  people  like  the  American,  by  the  very 
fact  of  its  being  composite,  has  brought  to  it  the  aptitudes 
to  qualify  it  to  operate  the  best  features  of  the  social 
life  of  all  the  nations  from  which  it  draws  its  recruits. 
Our  national  life  resulting  from  a  composition  of  peoples 
can  be  made  as  well  a  composititon  of  the  abilities  for 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS  169 

which  each  of  those  peoples  has  distinguished  itself, 
and  our  social  achievement  can  be  made  a  composition 
of  the  best  of  their  social  achievements. 

The  "checks"  in  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
on  popular  power,  such  as  the  Senate — the  complicated 
procedure  provided  for  making  amendments  to  the 
constitution  and  the  like — are  often  described  as  proofs 
that  the  founders  of  the  Government  distrusted  the 
people.  It  would  be  more  accurate  to  say  that  they 
illustrate  the  distrust  by  the  people  of  political  methods 
by  which  the  people  were  left  at  the  mercy  of  their  own 
caprices  or  passion.  These  checks  were  not  imposed 
upon  the  American  people.  They  were  adopted  by  the 
American  people.  It  was  just  such  an  act  as  when  an 
individual  frames  out  of  his  own  experience  or  that  of 
others  rules  for  the  control  of  a  hasty  tongue,  an  im- 
pulsive temper,  a  too  great  venturesomeness.  Never 
probably  has  a  system  of  government  been  put  into 
operation  among  any  people  which  has  been  so  thoroughly 
discussed,  weighed  and  approved  by  the  people  as  that 
of  the  United  States. 

The  French  provincial  discussions,  which  produced  the 
cahiers  in  which  the  grievances  of  the  people  of  France 
and  their  ideas  of  the  remedies  were  given,  were  not 
comparable  as  expressions  of  public  opinion  with  the 
countryside,  town,  state  and  national  deliberations  of 
the  American  people  upon  the  forms  of  the  government 
they  were  about  to  ordain.  The  one  fact  that  the 
Americans  had  had  local  self-government  for  a  century- 
had  given  public  opinion  a  sphere  which  it  could  find 
nowhere  else.  It  was  with  their  eyes  upon  the  republics 
of  Greece  and  Italy,  ancient  and  mediaeval,  and  upon  the 
Dutch  Republic,  and  upon  their  own  early  political 
history,  that  our  forefathers  studied  out  their  system  of 


1 70  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

checks — checks  upon  the  various  departments  of  the 
government  as  well  as  upon  the  people.  Their  action 
was  in  the  line  of  the  direct  evolution  which  can  be 
traced  through  the  growth  of  democracy  from  the  earliest 
Grecian  republics. 

Popular  government  has  been  steadily  adding  to  the 
restraints  upon  popular  action.  Socrates  was  put  to 
death  by  order  of  a  mass  meeting;  Aristides  was  banished 
by  a  mere  popular  vote,  from  which  there  was  no  appeal. 
Confiscations  were  declared  by  plebiscite  in  Greece.  It 
has  become  the  will  of  the  people  to  adjure  such  means 
of  expressing  their  will.  The  proposal  of  the  socialists, 
of  the  leaders  of  the  co-operative  movement,  of  the 
workingmen's  party  in  Great  Britain,  to  abolish  govern- 
ment by  party,  looks  to  another  creative  act  in  the  same 
line  of  the  evolutionary  creation  of  self-government. 
Because  of  a  coming  change,  the  people  are  heedless  of 
the  appeals  to  go  to  the  polls  and  the  primaries  and 
attend  to  their  political  duties,  which  are  being  ceaselessly 
dinned  into  their  ears  by  well-meaning  reformers.  It  is 
because  the  people  have  tried  to  do  by  these  political 
methods  what  cannot  be  accomplished  by  them  that 
things  have  come  to  their  present  pass  or,  rather,  impasse. 
The  true  remedy  is  not  to  go  back  to  the  impossible 
policy  which  produced  these  evils  but  to  follow  the 
forward  event,  for  in  that  is  the  clue  to  the  way  out. 
The  Boss  and  the  Ring  are  the  prototype  of  the  reformers 
of  the  future.  They  represent  the  specialisation  of 
functions.  They  are  the  result  of  the  passing  of  executive 
administration  out  of  the  hands  of  the  multitude,  who 
are  an  unfit  instrument,  into  the  hands  of  a  body  compact 
enough  to  have  a  mind,  a  will,  and  to  act  upon  them 
self-consciously.  The  Boss  and  the  Ring  are  institutions 
to  be  adopted  instead  of  being  abolished,  but  to  be 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN   POLITICS  171 

made  public  instead  of  private.  It  is  a  sad  sight  to  see 
the  public  whipped  up  into  a  spasm  of  reform  enthusiasm, 
only  to  find  itself  after  its  victory  no  better  off  than 
before.  Tweed  and  the  Tammany  ring  of  New  York 
were  most  gloriously  overthrown  by  the  people  at  the 
polls  in  1870.  But  the  people  found  themselves  in 
1895  more  completely  than  before  1870  the  victims  of  the 
rings,  the  bosses,  the  boodlers  of  Tammany.  They 
rose  in  1895,  and  the  morning  after  the  election  the 
papers  triumphantly  proclaimed  that  the  Tiger  was 
dead  again.  But  the  Tiger  lives  and  will  live,  for  he  is  a 
necessity  of  the  situation.  Since  the  New  Yorkers,  from 
a  lack  of  political  science,  will  not  get  their  business  done 
by  their  own  representatives  it  gets  itself  done  by 
Tammany  Hall  representatives.  Humanity  can  do  a 
great  many  things,  but  there  are  some  things  it  cannot  do. 
It  cannot  bring  its  political  energies  up  to  revolutionary 
temperature  every  election  day  and  every  day  between. 
People  must  dig,  and  bake,  sleep,  wed  and  die  as  well  as 
vote  and  keep  the  eye  of  eternal  vigilance  always  on 
their  representatives.  To  discharge  the  political  duties 
necessary  to  operate  our  Government  by  the  present 
theoretical  system  would  require  that  the  entire  popula- 
tion, like  the  Athenian  freemen,  should  attend  to  nothing 
but  politics.  It  would  involve  the  strain  of  a  perpetual 
revolution.  In  the  anti-Tammany  campaigns  of  1870 
and  1895  the  people  were  worked  up  to  a  fever  heat. 
Press,  pulpit,  bar,  labour  and  commerce  all  took  part. 
But  no  one  could  contend  that,  with  all  their  efforts,  they 
mastered  more  than  a  slight  knowledge  of  the  issues 
involved  or  of  the  personnel  of  the  opposing  faction. 
Nor  have  the  results  in  either  case  been  reform.  After 
having  been  thrown  into  tumult  in  this  way  time  and 
again,  with  no  gain  proportionate  to  the  cost  in  wear  and 


1 72  MAN,   THE    SOCIAL   CREATOR 

tear,  the  people  naturally  refuse  further  invitations  to 
go  into  convulsions  as  a  cure  for  their  political  ills. 
They  become  "exhausted  by  their  political  passions." 
Perhaps  it  may  be  possible  to  rouse  them  to  a  resolute 
and  passionate  uprising,  to  use  these  political  methods 
to  make  their  further  use  unnecessary,  abolishing  politics 
by  politics.  But  they  will  be  very  great  and  very 
fortunate  reformers  who  accomplish  this. 

Under  a  general  reaction  like  that  now  visible  against 
politics  there  is  always  some  reason.  The  people  not 
only  refuse  to  entrust  to  their  government,  city,  state 
and  national,  the  new  functions  recommended  by  the 
socialists,  but  they  are  letting  go  by  default  their  share 
in  the  government  they  already  have.  They  find  that 
the  fruits  of  party  adherents  do  not  come  up  to  the 
advertisements.  Party  politics  don't  work.  There  is 
something  more  here  than  betrayal  of  trust,  personal 
weaknesses,  incompetence  of  people.  There  is  a  defect 
in  the  system  itself.  It  is  contrary  to  common  sense  to 
make  administration  of  great  social  functions  dependent 
on  popular  favour,  on  some  person,  on  popular  moods, 
on  ability  of  the  magnetic  man  to  hypnotise  individuals 
and  multitudes,  on  power  of  selfish  syndicates  to  form 
themselves  into  a  Macedonian  phalanx  and  push  their 
wedge  through  the  body  politic  into  place  and  profit. 
Partisan  fury  breeds  as  inevitably  in  government  by 
party  as  avarice  in  industry  by  self-interest.  Of  course 
it  is  well  enough  to  exhort  people  to  do  their  best  in  a 
bad  system  while  it  is  here — moderation  in  all  things — 
but  the  prime  problem  is  to  find  the  better  system. 
The  merger  of  politics  into  education  by  the  substitution 
of  examination  for  election  has  already  begun.  This 
and  the  merger,  also  begun,  of  education  into  life  will 
provide  us  a  Work  government  instead  of  a  Talk  govern- 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS  173 

ment.  The  real  universal  suffrage  will  come  only  when 
education  is  universal  and  complete,  when  employment 
is  universal,  and  freedom  to  choose  any  livelihood  is 
universal. 

Election  by  examination  is  the  beginning  of  the  election 
by  education,  which  Emerson  prophesied.  This  is  to 
be  as  momentous  an  advance  upon  representative  govern- 
ment as  representative  government  itself  has  been  in  the 
evolution  of  methods  of  self -steering  by  the  people.  This 
Work  government  will  be  much  more  a  representative 
government  than  that  chosen  by  the  competitive  shouting 
of  our  present  system.  Selected,  instead  of  elected— 
self -selected,  first,  by  their  aptitudes  for  particular  lines  of 
study  and  work  and  then  selected  by  their  achievements 
in  the  work  of  educating  themselves  along  the  lines  of 
these  aptitudes — these  representatives  will  represent 
the  deliberate  and  intelligent  will  of  the  people,  embodied 
in  a  system  of  universal  education  carefully  built  up  to 
prepare  the  people  to  serve  themselves  on  all  sides  of 
social  activity.  The  offices  will  represent  the  needs 
of  the  people,  as  conceived  by  the  people ;  the  officers  will 
represent  the  people,  as  they  have  never  been  represented 
before.  The  play  of  selfishness  in  office  seekers,  of 
whim  and  passion  in  the  electorate,  will  not  be  banished, 
but  elevated  to  operate  on  a  level  infinitely  higher  than 
now.  The  will  of  the  people  will  not  be  infringed  upon. 
It  will  be  the  will  of  the  people  that  does  this.  It  will 
choose  to  express  itself  in  this  better  way.  It  will  be 
the  forward  step  of  a  people  reaching  a  new  grade  of 
social  consciousness,  and  resolving  by  a  united  intelligence 
to  abandon  impulsive  and  shallow  methods,  as  the  indi- 
viduals who  compose  the  people  are  learning  such  rules 
as  thinking  before  speaking  and  not  to  act  when  angry 
or  emotional.  Our  present  system  will  seem  as  ludicrous 


174 

in  the  future  as  the  elections  by  lung  power  described  by 
Plutarch,  or  the  Hebraic  and  Grecian  method  of  choosing 
generals  by  lot.  Perhaps  in  these  days  of  accelerating 
consummations  we  may  in  this  be  our_own  posterity,  and 
achieve  the  reform  in  time  to  allow  our  ripe  afternoon  to 
laugh  at  the  follies  of  the  morning. 

The  People  does  not  mean  a  mere  agglomeration  of 
persons.  Because  a  certain  number  of  millions  are 
enclosed  within  the  borders  of  the  United  States  they 
are  not  therefore  a  People.  The  People  is,  like  most  of 
our  capitalised  words,  the  name  of  an  ideal.  It  is  some- 
thing we  hope  to  be.  A  multitude  becomes  a  people 
as  it  becomes  united  in  faith  and  works.  There  is  an 
American  people  for  peace  as  against  invaders  or  in- 
surgents; but  there  is  no  American  people  for  defence 
against  the  starvation  or  pauperisation  of  the  victims  of 
those  who  hasten  to  be  rich.  There  is  no  American  people 
for  peace  in  industry.  There  is  an  American  people  for 
co-operation  in  carrying  letters  but  not  in  operating 
railroads. 

We  are  a  Postoffice  People,  a  Police  People,  a  War 
People,  a  Courts  of  Justice  People,  a  Ballot  People,  and 
in  things  in  most  of  which  the  nations  have  been  people 
before  us  for  thousands  of  years.  But  we  are  not  yet 
a  Telegraph  People,  a  Railroad  People,  a  Postal  Savings 
Bank  People,  a  National  Insurance  People,  a  Right- 
of-all-«to-Employment  People,  though  in  one  part  of 
the  world  or  another  nations  have  advanced  ahead  of 
us  to  these  unities  of  effort  and  participation.  We  of 
America  are,  for  whatever  reason,  distinctly  behind 
many  other  nations  in  many  of  such  conscious  collabora- 
tions on  a  national  scale  of  the  common  resources  for  the 
common  good.  "We,  the  people,"  said  our  forefathers 
founding  this  Government — the  whole  body  of  the  inhab- 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  POLITICS          175 

itants  of  a  territory  for  the  first  time  in  history  making 
each  other  equal  citizens.  But  even  these  forward  men 
failed  to  see  that  their  People  was  only  a  Half-People, 
inasmuch  as  they  left  the  women  outside  the  pale  of 
political  humanity.  Abigail  Adams  saw  it,  but  the 
truth  does  not  seem  to  have  gone  much  farther.  It 
does  not  appear  that  it  penetrated  the  mind  of  her  John 
Adams,  though  her  letters  show  she  deposited  it  there. 
The  wisest  of  the  fathers  did  see  that  in  a  land  where 
the  inhabitants  were  white  and  black  the  union  of  the 
whites  alone  did  not  make  a  true  People.  But  Washing- 
ton, Jefferson  and  their  associates  did  what  they  could, 
and  called  it  by  the  best  name  possible.  Half  a  century 
of  maddening  unrest  and  the  blood  of  the  Civil  War 
were  what  it  cost  to  pass  the  thirteenth,  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  amendment  to  the  Constitution  and  give  the 
blacks  the  right  to  say  with  us,  "We,  the  People." 
The  fourteenth  amendment  admits  to  citizenship  on  the 
basis  of  the  mutual  recognition  of  manhood  all  adult 
males  "without  distinction  of  race."  We  have  taken 
another  step  up  toward  the  creation  of  our  full  ideal 
of  the  people.  Most  of  the  states,  says  Aristotle,  which 
have  made  war  their  business  in  order  to  enslave  others 
rather  than  merely  to  prevent  themselves  from  being 
reduced  to  slavery  by  others,  have  been  ruined  as  soon 
as  they  acquired  a  supreme  power  over  those  around 
them.  Very  shrewd  and  profound  is  this  other  observa- 
tion, and  as  luminous  to-day  as  when  he  wrote  it  twenty- 
five  hundred  years  ago,  that  that  city  is  not  to  be  esteemed 
happy  in  which  the  people  have  been  trained  to  over- 
power their  neighbours,  for  the  same  principle  will  lead 
every  citizen  who  can,  to  endeavour  to  overpower  his 
fellow  citizens  as  Pausanius  did  in  Lacedemonia,  and  as 
the  class  who  have  led  the  English  in  their  foreign  con- 


1 76  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

quests  have  done  to  their  people  at  home.  The  punish- 
ment which  the  English  people  suffer  for  making  the 
Hindoos,  the  Egyptians,  the  Zulus  their  tributaries  is 
that  they  are  themselves  held  as  tributaries  at  home  to 
their  ruling  classes.  Our  philosophy  of  business,  teaching 
the  citizens  to  overpower  each  other,  is  as  surely  leading 
us  to  social  disaster  and  overthrow. 

It  is  the  business  class  who  talk  about  "  not  looking 
to  the  government,"  who  extol  "self help"  while  they 
are  continually  hunting  for  government  franchises  and 
privileges  and  buying  them  by  bribes  from  traitorous 
representatives  of  the  people. 

To  give  the  poor,  the  ignorant,  the  hungry,  overdriven, 
leisureless,  the  suffrage  and  tell  them  to  protect  them- 
selves against  the  rich,  the  initiated,  the  worldlywise, 
the  wellfed,  the  leisured,  with  the  vote  which  requires 
for  its  effective  handling  wealth,  leisure,  experience, 
knowledge,  and  morals  is  a  mere  freak  of  extermination. 
It  is  the  freedom  we  give  the  rat  when  we  loose  him 
into  the  ring  where  the  terrier  waits  for  him.  Security 
of  subsistance  is  the  indivisible  other  side  of  the  suff- 
rage. If  the  rich  refuse  to  accept  this,  and  resisting  lead 
us  back  to  feudalism,  they  will  lose  their  wealth  and 
themselves.  The  people  will  go  forward  and  save  both 
wealth  and  commonwealth. 

The  People,  when  it  has  evolved  itself  to  this  stage  of 
a  union  with  no  distinction  of  race  or  sex,  will  still  not 
be  The  People.  The  People  means  union.  Where  there 
is  disunion  there  is  only  as  yet  a  crowd  or,  rather,  two 
crowds.  There  are  two  nations  Plato  said,  the  rich  and 
the  poor.  Although  there  are  co-operations,  reciprocities, 
on  every  hand  in  our  industry ;  although  we  do  serve  each 
other,  even  the  syndicate  and  its  oppressed  customers^ 
still  these  co-operations  are  in  the  brutish  stage.  They 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN  POLITICS  177 

are  unconscious  as  when  the  bee  carries  pollen  from 
flower  to  flower,  not  thinking  of  the  buds  of  next  spring 
but  only  of  its  winter's  honey.  We  do  get  food  from  the 
country  to  the  cities,  and  commodities  from  the  cities 
to  the  country,  but  with  what  stupidity  and  waste! 
All  over  the  world  are  rising  hundreds  of  co-operative 
stores,  banks,  granges,  farmers'  alliances  and  co-operative 
communities.  All  over  the  world  the  political  people 
are  steadily  moving  forward  in  the  use  of  their  municipal 
and  national  powers  to  increase  the  number  of  activities 
in  which  they  work  and  share.  These  are  new  nerve 
centres  of  union  which  will  expand  until  the  local  co- 
operative commonwealths  will  grow  to  be  national  ones. 
One  union  leads  to  another;  political  union  will  produce 
industrial  union.  Union  is  peace,  and  the  people  must 
have  peace  in  all  their  relations  with  each  other.  This 
is  the  actual  process  going  on  before  us.  We  have  seen 
the  municipality  create  itself,  rising  out  of  feudalism. 
Then  we  see  this  municipality  taking  to  itself  one  function 
after  another  through  the  centuries  until  the  affairs  of  a 
London  are  vaster  and  more  complex  than  those  of  an 
ancient  empire.  When  we  hear  the  poet  sing  of  the 
Parliament  of  Man,  the  Federation  of  the  World,  we 
know  that  whither  his  genius  has  thrown  its  thought  the 
common  thought  will  arrive  at  last,  and  that  his  inspired 
song  is  but  the  first  clink  of  the  hammer  on  the  foundations 
of  the  International  Commonwealth. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE     NEW     CONSCIENCE     MANIFESTING     ITSELF     IN     EDU- 
CATIONAL  METHODS   AND   AIMS 

THE  reform  of  government  means  infinitely  more  than 
substituting  selection  by  education  for  election  by 
politics.  In  the  education  by  which  men  are  to  be 
qualified  to  serve  each  other  and  themselves,  to  reach 
their  highest,  and  through  their  highest  to  lift  society 
to  its  highest,  the  civil-service  schools  will  have  relatively 
a  small  place,  no  matter  if  all  the  nationalisations  and 
municipalisations  now  proposed  are  accomplished.  Social 
life  will  never  again  be  narrowed  down  to  a  governmental 
function,  as  in  Sparta  or  Peru  or  other  communistic 
societies.  The  "individuality"  which  has  been  gained 
by  the  race  for  every  member  will  never  be  surrendered. 
Civilisation  will  not  return  to  the  castes  of  India  or  the 
guilds  of  the  Middle  Ages,  not  even  under  the  invitation 
of  the  most  glittering  and  seductive  Utopia.  Competition 
can  never  be  abolished.  It  is  the  economic  expression 
of  the  individualism  created  by  the  emancipations  of 
history  we  call  modern  times.  Civilisation,  cutting  the 
fetters  of  caste,  guild,  status,  custom,  says  to  the  citizen : 
"Go,  Come,  Trade,  Work,  Rest,  Think,  Speak,  Vote,  as 
you  deem  best."  In  the  market  this  liberty  is  competi- 
tion. The  evils  of  competition  are  not  evidence  of  retro- 
gression but  of  advance.  A  new  individualism  has 
discovered  itself — one  that  can  combine — and  it  is 
exploiting  the  world  until  the  world  learns  to  combine. 
It  is  much  that  the  selfishness  and  cruelty  which  once 

178 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        179 

expressed  themselves  in  midnight  forays  and  piracies 
now  use  lockouts  and  lobbies.  We  have  created  the 
environment  which  has  made  the  qualities  of  the  com- 
mercial thug  necessary  to  worldly  success.  We  have 
allowed  public-made  wealth  to  be  privately  appropriated. 
We  are  now  the  world  over  discussing  how  to  change  the 
environment  so  as  to  give  the  lead  to  those  who  have 
the  wit  and  virtue,  first,  for  the  social  creation  of  wealth 
and,  second,  for  its  social  administration.  Then  we 
shall  have  bank  Washingtons,  railroad  Lincolns,  trust 
Jeffersons.  We  will  not  abolish  competition,  but  we 
will  not  keep  it  the  competition  of  the  Iroquois  and 
Apaches.  There  will  still  be  competition  when  we  have 
superseded  politics  and  business  by  education.  But  it 
will  be  the  kind  of  competition  we  have  in  school. 

The  Peace  of  Labour  we  are  to  establish  must  be  con- 
sistent with  the  perpetuation  of  the  rights  so  hardly 
won,  so  precious,  of  each  individual  to  come  and  go,  to 
work  or  not  to  work,  to  work  at  this  or  at  that,  as  his 
circumstances,  his  development,  his  own  conception  of 
his  interest  and  his  duty  tell  him  to  do.  It  is  to  be  the 
function  of  society  not  to  force  him  hither  or  thither, 
but  to  open  the  way  for  him  to  go  hither  or  thither,  as  he 
wills  or  must,  free  from  force.  The  whole  theory  of  true 
reform  is  to  set  free  the  "inward  perfecting  principle 
within  the  individual  and  society,"  to  use  Aristotle's 
words,  which  when  released  from  interceptions  and 
oppressions  can  be  easily  guided  to  move  to  its  proper 
ends. 

The  Labour  movement  then  which  is  to  establish  the 
Peace  of  Labour  is  concerned  with  all  education  that 
fits  for  the  service  of  the  state,  and  for  all  other  social 
service.  When  with  this  purpose  and  ideal  we  survey 
the  course  which  education  is  taking  to-day,  from  kinder- 


i8o  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

garten  to  university  extension,  from  the  cooking,  sewing, 
manual  training  to  the  polytechnic  and  art  schools,  we 
catch  the  inspiring  fact  that  the  very  reform  the  reformers 
are  crying  for  as  if  it  were  still  in  a  far-distant  future  is 
being  worked  out  by  our  own  hands.  There  are  great 
faults  of  ideal  and  performance,  but  with  all  these  it  is 
true  that  never  before  was  education  so  near  to  life  as 
to-day,  never  before  were  the  people  being  educated  into 
such  a  comprehension  of  the  processes  of  nature,  or 
into  such  a  social  sympathy,  or  under  such  creative 
ideals  as  to-day.  We  who  live  may  ourselves  see  great 
fruit  from  this  planting.  The  idea  of  training  in  the 
manual  arts  is  already  well  along  in  its  destiny  of  being 
universally  applied.  This  alone  will  bring  with  it  a 
universal  insight  into  work,  and  the  patience,  skill  and 
other  virtues  work  requires,  and  a  sympathy  with  those 
who  work.  It  will  so  mix  up  in  work  the  well-to-do 
and  the  poor,  the  leisure  and  the  artisan  and  other 
classes,  as  to  destroy  the  last  vestige  of  that  scorn  of 
the  labourer  as  a  "lower  order"  which  has  blinded  social 
perceptions  from  Plato's  day  to  our  own.  To  Aristotle's 
saying  that  no  artisan  could  live  a  life  of  virtue,  and  our 
own  refusal  to  pass  Eight  Hours'  laws  or  raise  wages, 
because  the  workingmen  could  not  be  trusted  with  time 
or  money,  are  but  different  ways  of  expressing  the  same 
scorn  of  those  who  do  the  work  of  the  world.  The 
universalisation  of  manual  training  which  will  put  the 
children  of  the  rich  and  the  poor  side  by  side  at  the 
workbench  and  the  forge  is  the  beginning  of  an  order 
which  will  put  them  side  by  side  in  life,  doing  the  actual 
work  for  which  the  school  has  fitted  them.  When  the 
well-to-do  traveller  knows  that  it  may  be  his  son  or 
brother  or  friend  who  holds  the  throttle  of  the  engine 
behind  which  he  speeds  through  the  night;  when  the 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        181 

passers-by  know  they  or  their  neighbours  may  have 
dear  representatives  in  any  group  they  see  at  work  on  the 
sewers,  or  electric  lights,  or  other  public  works;  when 
by  the  expansion  and  application  of  the  manual-training 
idea  work  has  been  made  known  to  all,  the  movement  will 
go  on  to  make  it  safe,  pleasant,  profitable,  social,  for  all. 
The  philosophers,  Aristotle,  Rousseau,  were  like  Emerson 
in  pointing  out  that  the  state  must  be  built  directly  upon 
the  school.  The  statesmen,  Stein,  Turgot,  Hamilton, 
were  alike  in  favouring  the  same  idea  in  the  actual  ad- 
ministration of  the  state.  "That  which  contributes  most 
to  preserve  the  state  is  what  is  now  most  despised," 
says  Aristotle,  "  to  educate  children  with  reference  to  the 
state."  The  objects  to  which  this  legislation  should  tend, 
Aristotle  further  says,  should  be  labour  and  war,  in  order 
that  the  people  may  have  rest  and  peace.  The  end  of 
war  is  peace,  and  of  labour,  rest.  This  education  he 
enforces  should  be  taken  care  of  by  the  state,  and  it 
should  correspond  to  the  nature  of  the  government. 
This  view  of  education  is  made  modern  by  the  rapid 
extension  of  governmental  functions,  and  by  the  new 
institution — new  for  us,  though  not  for  China — of  requir- 
ing educational  examinations  for  admission  to  the  service 
of  the  government.  The  addition  of  collective  functions  to 
the  government  forces  civil-service  reform,  and  this  forces 
education.  The  same  duty  which  puts  on  the  state  the 
task  of  education  puts  on  the  state  the  task  of  providing 
an  opportunity  of  using  the  education.  Education  for 
the  public  service  is  the  expansion  of  the  civil-service 
examination  idea.  By  the  siftings,  promotions,  revela- 
tions of  aptitudes,  and  the  like,  of  education,  selection 
may  be  made  to  take  the  place  of  election.  Both  the 
mental  and  political  life  of  the  people  are  waiting  for 
some  such  impulse  as  would  be  thus  reciprocally  given. 


i82  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

The  social  ideal  involved  in  such  a  system  must  be 
higher  than  that  we  now  follow.  Industry  by  syndi- 
cates for  self-interest  and  government  by  party  for 
self-interest  keep  the  people  and  the  country  poor  and 
distracted,  and  hold  out  of  action  the  nobler  motives 
which  would  produce  nobler — and  greater — wealth.  The 
historic  line  of  development  of  education  is  to  make 
it  coextensive  with  life,  as  we  may  see  by  comparing 
the  Persian  scheme  of  teaching  the  young  to  "  ride,  shoot 
and  tell  the  truth,"  or  the  Aristotelian  curriculum,  read- 
ing, gymnastics,  music  and  painting,  with  the  modern 
instruction. 

The  historic  line  of  development  of  government  is  to 
make  it  more  and  more  the  organ  of  the  power  of  all  the 
people  for  the  benefit  of  all  the  people.  These  two 
lines  of  Politics  and  Education  have  met  in  the  Civil-Ser- 
vice examinations,  in  the  military  schools  and  naval 
establishments  by  governments.  The  theory  of  educa- 
tion has  advanced  beyond  that  of  a  preparation  for  life. 
Pending  this  consummation  the  nearer  results  already 
apparent  are  a  great  gain  in  comprehension  of  the  high 
qualities  demanded  for  the  accomplishment  of  any  good 
work,  and,  following  upon  this,  a  great  gain  in  social 
sympathy  between  those  who  have  learned  this  and  the 
workers.  From  the  point  of  view  of  its  social  importance 
manual-training  is  the  successor,  in  evolution,  of  the 
abolition  of  slavery,  serfdom,  caste.  But  with  this  great 
significant  difference.  Those  were  abolitions,  negative. 
This  is  construction,  positive.  Those  said  that  the 
workers  should  not  be  forced.  This  preaches  that  work 
is  a  blessing,  that  it  is  the  great  creative  function,  and 
opens  the  way  for  all  men  to  enter  upon  their  greatest 
inheritance  in  its  enjoyment.  Under  slavery,  serfdom, 
caste,  the  manual-training  idea  could  never  have  emerged. 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION         183 

The  abolition  of  slavery  marks  the  end  of  the  old;  the 
manual-training  school  begins  the  new. 

Society,  demanding  of  it  no  better  constitution  than  it 
has  to-day,  no  more  light  than  it  has  now  on  the  culture 
of  man  and  the  objects  of  life,  is  pitiably,  wickedly, 
wastefully  derelict  in  the  care  of  its  young.  The  covey 
of  quail  or  the  pack  of  wolves  at  least  bring  up  their 
broods  and  litters  in  a  natural  habitat,  and  teach  them 
all  the  little  they  know  of  the  science  of  life  before  turning 
them  out  into  the  world.  The  baby  quails  and  infant 
wolves  are  better  off  than  our  children,  relatively.  More 
natural  is  theii  youth,  more  complete  is  their  preparation. 
We  are  outraging  our  children's  lives  at  just  the  point 
where  the  brutes  perfect  that  of  their  little  ones.  We  do 
not  teach  them  what  we  know  nor  give  them  what  we 
have.  Even  the  children  of  the  rich  are  violated  in  their 
most  sacred  rights. 

We  know  that  the  child  is  a  plant,  an  animal,  that 
needs  pure  and  fresh  food,  including  air,  clean  dirt,  full 
activity  and  beauty  of  sound,  scene  and  association. 
These  we  can  give  them — all;  not  ours  only — but  all. 
The  schools  for  the  children  of  the  very  rich  that  are 
growing  up  in  country  places  are  the  precursors  of  all 
the  schools  of  the  futuie.  When  all  our  public  schools  are 
such  schools,  and  there  are  such  public  schools  for  all  the 
children  of  the  community,  we  shall  have  at  last  begun  our 
national  life. 

But  the  school  is  only  a  small  part  of  the  education 
of  the  child.  To  make  the  scheme  of  education  complete 
the  eighteen  hours  the  child  spends  out  of  school  must 
be  on  as  high  a  plane  of  life  as  the  six  hours  in  school. 
The  families  and  the  communities  must  give  to  all  the 
people  the  same  purity  and  peace  of  life  as  to  the  child. 
The  community  must  go  into  the  country  scenes  and 


i84  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

country  virtues  as  well  as  the  school.  This  movement  has 
begun  in  the  suburbanising  of  our  city  populations. 
But  we  have  not  yet  begun  the  suburbanising  of  our 
schools.  We  have  all  the  sanitary,  hygienic,  physiolog- 
ical, aesthetic  knowledge  we  need.  We  know  that  every 
child  should  live,  and  grow,  and  study  in  clean  fields 
and  beautiful  places.  We  have  all  the  physical  science, 
all  the  mechanical  appliances,  all  the  financial  wealth 
and  machinery  to  put  our  children  and  ourselves  into  the 
environment  needed.  If  Chicago  were  expanded  to-morrow 
into  a  city  of  gardens  one  hundred  and  twenty  miles 
in  diameter  it  could  sustain  a  population  of  14,000,000 
with  only  two  to  the  acre,  and  we  already  have  the 
means  of  transport  of  persons,  things,  and  communication 
to  make  this  vast  population  one  family.  We  already 
have  locomotives  which  would  guarantee  that  no  one 
should  be  more  than  sixty  minutes  from  the  centre. 
The  telephone  and  the  pneumatic  tube  are  in  our  hands. 
Aristotle  could  only  dream  of  the  machinery  that  might 
some  day  come  to  remake  the  world  nearer  to  the  heart's 
desire.  We  have  the  machinery,  and  the  secret  of  our 
immediate  future  is  that  we  are  about  to  put  it  into  the 
social  and  spiritual  service  of  mankind.  The  individual 
inventor,  capitalist,  entrepreneur,  has  done  his  part  in 
introducing  it.  Society  will  now  apply  it.  Steam  and 
electricity  have  been  worked  like  the  slaves,  to  make 
wealth ;  they  are  to  be  used  to  create  welfare.  Steam  and 
electricity  applied  to  the  manufacture  of  social  soul  will 
increase  their  products  as  the  slave  does  when  made  a 
citizen.  The  kindergarten,  the  manual-training  school, 
the  fashionable  country  school,  the  suburbanising  of  our 
cities — all  these  are  the  germs  of  the  new  educational 
movement  which  will  make  human  nature  natural  and 
society  social. 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION         185 

If  it  is  true  that  to  reach  our  highest  development  we 
must  become  as  little  children,  education  must  be  lifelong. 
Education  must  be  life,  and  life  must  be  education. 
"We  must  begin  with  the  children"  to  found  the  new 
commonwealth.  Our  pretended  guarantee  of  an  educa- 
tion for  every  child  must  be  made  a  real  guarantee. 
This  education,  public,  universal,  should  offer  every 
child  the  opportunity  of  instruction — theoretical  and 
practical,  mental  and  manual — to  fit  it  for  the  public 
service.  If,  after  the  method  of  composite  photography, 
we  should  make  a  type  picture  of  the  modern  community 
by  blending  all  its  features  into  one  general  aspect,  we 
would  be  amazed  at  the  extent  of  its  activities  and 
would  gain  a  new  conception  of  the  laggardness  of  our 
modern  education,  advanced  as  we  think  it,  and  as  it 
is  compared  with  that  of  former  periods. 

Our  present  system  is  altogether  incompatible  with 
the  prosperity  and  liberty  of  the  people,  and  of  the  mis- 
guided few  who  think  their  wealth  and  power  are  secured 
by  it.  The  education  of  the  people  is  confined  to  the 
mere  rudiments,  and  even  these  are  but  meagerly  obtained 
by  a  large  part  of  the  most  necessitous  population  in  all 
our  cities.  The  higher  education  of  our  colleges  and 
universities  is  becoming  the  luxury  of  the  well-to-do  and 
the  workingman's  child  who  gets  into  college  will  soon  be 
an  estray.  In  England  entrance  to  the  higher  branches  of 
the  public  service  is  possible  only  to  those  who  have  had  a 
university  training,  as  only  those  can  pass  the  examination. 
The  dependence  of  our  colleges  and  universities  upon  the 
gifts  of  the  rich  is  most  disastrous.  American  colleges  have 
become  centres  of  the  radiation  of  silence  and  darkness 
on  the  most  pressing  problems  before  social  scholarship. 
The  questions  of  American  social  life  most  urgent  to-day 
are  questions  of  the  use  of  social  powers  to  establish 


i86  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

social  peace.  The  archives  of  learning  are  overflowing 
with  the  contributions  of  past  and  contemporary  ex- 
perience to  the  answers  to  this  question.  But  there  is  no 
class  which  is  contributing  so  little  to  make  the  public 
further  familiar  with  these  accumulations  of  human 
experience  as  the  professors  of  political  economy.  There 
have  been  enlightening  books  on  the  railroad  question, 
the  trusts,  municipal  ownership,  the  labour  movement, 
but  very  few  of  them  from  the  professors  to  whose  de- 
partment these  fields  of  research  belong,  and  their  deliver- 
ances are  decreasing  in  number  and  strength.  As  it  is 
not  safe,  if  they  are  liberal,  to  say  what  they  think,  they 
prefer  to  say  nothing.  Our  educational  system  and  our 
political  system  run  athwart  each  other.  Our  politics 
say  that  all  shall  rule;  our  educational  arrangements  say 
that  only  the  few  shall  rule,  and  they  could  not  be  better 
planned  to  prevent  that  general  spread  of  intelligence  and 
training  by  which  alone  the  common  people  could  fit 
themselves  either  to  think,  and  vote,  or  to  discharge  the 
duties  of  office.  Full  education,  to-day,  is  still  too  much 
a  privilege  of  a  few;  this  makes  the  power  of  intelligent 
participation  in  political  life,  even  for  the  simple  act  of 
voting,  still  too  much  the  privilege  of  the  few.  This 
political  privilege  and  educational  privilege  are  two 
of  a  trinity  of  privileges,  the  third  member  of  which 
is  the  privilege  of  wealth,  or  welfare.  Selfish  education  > 
selfish  politics,  selfish  industry,  these  are  the  three  persons 
of  the  Baal  of  our  modern  world.  The  people  look 
with  apathy  upon  the  attacks  now  being  made  upon  the 
common  schools  by  the  selfishness  of  sectarian  fanaticism, 
preferring  the  advantage  of  its  church  to  the  advantage 
of  religion ;  and  by  the  selfishness  of  the  taxpayer,  grudg- 
ing every  cent  spent  by  the  community;  and  by  the 
selfishness  of  capital,  which  does  not  want  too  many 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        187 

children  put  into  school,  since  that  would  take  them 
out  of  the  labour  market.  How  our  modern  worship  of 
wealth  manufactures  poverty  is  nowhere  better  illustrated 
than  in  our  treatment  of  child  life,  the  fountain  of  all 
wealth.  Given  chance  to  grow,  learn,  ripen,  the  child  of 
our  stores,  factories,  gutters,  could  earn  tenfold  and  be 
tenfold  to  itself,  its  parents  and  the  world.  But  we 
have  not  yet  the  "business  sense"  to  gather  that  wealth. 
When  the  poor  parent  wants  dates  we  let  him  cut 
down  the  palmtree  on  which  his  future  supplies  of 
dates — and  ours — depend.  There  would  be  no  apathy 
about  the  depredation  on  the  schools  if  the  schools 
were  made  what  they  ought  to  be,  the  gates  through 
which  every  child  entered  the  Elysian  fields  of  a  full 
life. 

It  is  the  special  work  of  modern  times  to  have  broadened 
education  nearer  to  life.  One  of  the  best  differences 
between  early  times  and  our  own  is  in  the  enlargement 
of  education  by  innumerable  schools,  which  prepare  the 
people  for  life  in  special  directions.  Modern  life  is 
infinitely  more  complicated  than  early  life,  but  educa- 
tion has  done  much  more  than  merely  to  broaden  in 
proportion.  Our  education  covers  all  the  ground  of 
Greek,  Roman,  Mediaeval  education;  has  added  many 
entirely  new  features  corresponding  to  additions  to 
modern  life,  and,  besides,  has  put  upon  its  schools  much 
of  the  preparation  for  life  work  which  the  ancients  never 
thought  of  asking  the  schools  to  do.  Penelope  and  her 
maidens  learned  to  weave  from  their  mothers  and  nurses, 
but  now  the  science  of  fibres  and  machinery  and  many 
household  arts  are  taught  in  technical  schools.  The 
manual-training,  polytechnic,  trade,  scientific,  mining, 
agricultural  and  other  such  schools  are  broadening  educa- 
tion nearer  to  life  on  all  sides.  Through  these  schools 


1 88  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

a  selective  choice  of  the  officials  of  the  common  welfare 
in  industry  is  made. 

Special  instruction  for  those  who  are  to  serve  the 
people  governmentally  has  become  a  considerable  de- 
partment of  our  education.  One  of  the  facts  of  sociolog- 
ical science  is  that  popular  government  favours  popular 
education.  This  is  true  from  the  times  of  Aristotle  and 
Plato.  The  emancipators  Stein  and  Wilhelm  von  Hum- 
boldt  founded  the  University  of  Berlin.  The  Puritans 
established  the  Commonwealth  of  Massachusetts  and 
Harvard  College  almost  simultaneously.  Hamilton  organ- 
ised the  University  of  the  State  of  New  York  as  almost  his 
first  work  after  the  American  Revolution.  The  French 
Revolution  signalised  itself  by  organising  the  great 
system  of  government  schools,  the  famous  Polytechnic 
in  the  centre,  which  now  educates  those  who  wish  to  enter 
the  government  service.  The  French  Republic  now  has 
for  the  education  of  those  who  wish  to  become  its  officials 
a  School  of  Bridges  and  Roads,  a  School  of  Mines,  a 
Forestry  School,  a  Telegraph  school,  a  School  of  Hydro- 
graphy, a  School  for  the  Manufactures  of  the  State,  a 
Powder  and  Saltpetre  School,  a  School  of  Agriculture,  a 
Stud-farm  School,  a  School  of  Archives,  a  Colonial 
School,  a  School  of  Modern  Oriental  Languages  for  con- 
sular candidates.  These  schools  are  supplementary  to 
the  Polytechnic.  The  Polytechnic  is  the  general  govern- 
ment school,  and  its  graduates  pass,  according  to  the 
career  they  have  chosen,  into  one  or  the  other  of  these 
special  schools.  Besides  these,  which  might  be  called 
Schools  of  Peace,  there  are  more  than  half  a  dozen 
schools  of  war  by  land  and  sea.  The  manufactures  of  the 
state,  for  which  there  is  this  school  in  Paris,  are  tobacco, 
matches,  gunpowder,  saltpetre,  Gobelin  tapestry  at 
Paris,  Sevres  pottery,  tapestry  at  Beauvais  and  mosaics; 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION         189 

in  addition  to  the  School  of  Manufactures  at  Paris,  there 
are  special  schools  in  connection  with  the  porcelain  works 
at  Sevres,  the  tapestry  works  at  Beauvais,  and  at  Paris, 
the  Gobelin  tapestry  works  and  national  mosaic  works. 
To  crown  this  series  of  government  schools,  French 
educators  and  the  French  Republic  have  been  working 
intermittently  for  a  hundred  years  to  create  a  School  of 
Administration.  The  Polytechnic  and  the  schools  asso- 
ciated with  it  have  special  reference  to  the  engineering 
and  industrial  services  of  the  state.  The  School  of 
Administration  would  prepare  for  the  higher  duties  of 
government  in  foreign  and  domestic  policy.  This 
school  was  first  proposed  after  the  Revolution  of  1789. 
An  attempt  to  set  it  in  operation  was  made  by  the 
government  which  came  into  power  with  the  Revolution 
of  1848.  It  failed,  as  the  government  workshops  did. 
The  work  it  was  to  have  done  is  now  done  with  fair 
success  by  the  School  of  Political  Sciences  at  Paris. 
This  is  a  private  undertaking,  but  its  instructors  are 
almost  all  officials  who  occupy  the  chief  places  in  the 
government  departments,  and  a  very  large  proportion  of 
those  who  enter  the  service  of  the  state  are  its  graduates. 
Its  relations  with  the  government  are  such  as  to  make 
it  almost  a  public  institution,  and  it  is  practically  the 
great  civil-service  school  of  the  state.  The  organisation 
of  these  schools  is  democratic.  The  scholars  in  the 
national  schools  of  the  Old  Regime,  which  educated  for 
the  army  and  navy  and  for  the  care  of  the  bridges,  were 
drawn  wholly  from  the  privileged  classes.  But  examina- 
tion for  entrance  to  the  Polytechnic  is  open  to  all  under 
the  same  conditions.  While  its  tuition  is  not  free,  so 
many  free  scholarships  are  granted  to  promising  students 
as  to  amount  in  some  years  to  about  half  the  total  number. 
Students  at  the  special  schools,  with  but  one  or  two 


1 90  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

exceptions,  are  paid  salaries  for  their  support  instead  of 
being  called  upon  to  pay  tuition.  In  the  porcelain 
school  at  Sevres,  for  instance,  workingmen's  children  are 
taken  at  twelve  and  carried  through  a  course  of  seven 
years.  The  second  year  they  receive  a  salary  of  one 
hundred  francs,  and  this  is  increased  year  by  year  until 
the  last  year  they  are  paid  one  thousand  francs.  In  many 
cases  courses  of  travel  and  study  abroad  are  also  provided 
for  them. 

The  Governments  of  Prussia  and  Austria  have  taken 
charge  of  the  task  of  educating  those  who  are  to  enter 
their  service,  but  not  in  the  same  way  that  France  has 
done.  The  public  service  is  entered  by  examination,  and 
promotion  also  is  largely  made  upon  examination. 
Candidates  are  not  prepared  for  the  entrance  examina- 
tions, as  in  France,  at  special  schools.  As  the  schools  and 
universities  were  already  in  the  hands  of  the  government 
in  Austria  and  Prussia,  all  that  was  needed  was  to  arrange 
the  courses  of  study  with  a  view  to  the  examinations,  and 
this  has  been  done.  One  of  the  characteristic  features  of 
the  Prussian  system  is  that  the  candidates  successful  at 
the  examinations  must  pass  through  a  probationary 
period  of  practical  work  in  addition  to  the  scholastic 
training.  The  Prussian  state  thus  prepares  its  citizens 
for  service  in  its  industrial-political  tasks.  These  include 
the  administration  of  the  public  domain  and  forests,  the 
state  bank,  the  royal  porcelain  works,  salt  mines,  state 
railways,  the  lottery,  public  works,  state  medical  and 
veterinary  offices,  the  postoffice,  and  the  public  schools. 
There  is  also  a  naval  commercial  institute.* 

The  expenditure  of  public  money  in  the  United  States 
for  the  public-school  system,  the  agricultural  colleges  and 

*  NOTE — Mr.  Lloyd's  incompleted  notes  cited  many  more  instances  of  technical  educa- 
tion, notably  those  instituted  by  the  German  and  other  European  Governments, 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        191 

the  state  universities  is  even  more  than  proportionately 
larger  than  that  in  any  other  country,  because  it  has 
been  our  ambition  to  prepare  each  child  for  citizenship. 
We  have  made  advances  in  specialised  training  for 
teachers,  for  mining  experts  and  for  a  dozen  other  pro- 
fessions. It  now  remains  for  us  to  carry  this  work 
on  and  to  consciously  supply  the  educated  statesman  for 
those  departments  of  governmental  activity  in  which 
we  most  deeply  feel  the  need  of  the  expert.  With  all 
the  enthusiasm  for  public  education  which  the  United 
States  has  always  displayed,  it  is  quite  possible  that  in 
spite  of  our  size  and  confused  ideas  as  to  the  functions  of 
government  we  may  be  the  first  nation  to  achieve  election 
through  education. 

A  new  culture  has  been  born,  too,  which  takes  the 
next  step,  inevitable  after  the  three  R's  have  been  made 
the  common  culture.  It  does  more  than  to  insist  that 
the  little  children  of  the  poor  now  turned  away  from 
the  primary  school  in  all  our  great  cities  shall  be  taught 
before  a  cent  be  spent  on  high  schools — bread  before 
pie.  It  insists  that  no  culture  is  culture  which  leaves 
the  hand  side  of  the  mind  uninstructed,  repudiates  the  old 
system  under  which  minds  could  not  shake  hands.  It 
knows  that  the  money  power  has  left  its  mark  on  our 
schools  and  colleges,  and  finds  it  in  the  discrimination 
between  rich  and  poor,  in  the  expenditure  of  all  school 
funds — in  the  utterly  materialistic  character  of  teach- 
ing— the  curriculum  containing  no  religion,  no  human- 
ity. It  opposes  the  sinister  and  selfish  plot  to  put 
schools  under  the  control  of  one  institution,  itself  a 
great  landowner,  money-owner,  man-owner,  and  on  the 
ecclesiastic  side  the  most  subtle  instrument  of  the 
money-power.  This  new  culture  insists  that  from 
primary  school  to  university,  at  the  very  foundation  of 


192 

at  the  very  foundation  of  learning  and  through  all  its 
warp  and  woof  shall  be  taught  the  principle  of  that 
religion  which  makes  every  man  his  brother's  keeper 
and  which  refuses  to  regard  labour  as  a  commodity.  It 
repudiates  that  fatuous  self-conceit  which  would  carry 
the  teaching  of  the  universities  down  to  the  working 
people,  but  would  regenerate  the  universities  by  carry- 
ing up  into  them  the  ideals  and  knowledge  of  life  held 
by  the  working  people  themselves.  Culture  is  more  than 
science,  more  than  letters,  more  than  mathematics.  It 
is  the  science  of  man's  aspiration,  the  laws  of  growth 
struggling  for  room  amid  great  inert  masses.  It  is 
knowing  how  to  use  science  and  letters  in  a  more  un- 
iversal application.  Culture  is  not  to  become  more 
learned  than  others  but  to  make  others  as  learned  as 
we.  True  learning  is  to  be  found  more  in  men  than  in 
books,  more  in  the  living  than  dead,  more  in  our  thoughts 
than  in  those  of  others,  more  in  being  than  seeming,  more 
in  justice  than  erudition,  more  in  the  recognition  of  the 
brotherhood,  fatherhood,  motherhood,  sisterhood  of  all 
men  and  women  than  in  any  superiority  of  man.  The 
new  culture  will  seek  not  to  produce  a  sect  of  learned 
but  to  distribute  all  learning ;  it  will  know  that  it  is  as 
true  in  learning  as  in  property,  that  any  private  good  is  a 
delusion.  The  new  culture  will  not  read  Browning  or  talk 
philosophy  to  itself  but  to  others.  It  will  not  pump  up  its 
philosophy  from  its  own  little  Summer  schools,  but  will  go 
forth  to  seek  it  among  all  men,  and  will  find  in  the  en- 
franchised masses  with  their  new  freedom,  new  dignity, 
new  growth  and  new  love  depths  of  it  that  the  solitary 
philosopher  or  dilettante  never  dreamed  of.  A  great  many 
things  that  pass  for  culture  to-day  will  before  long,  I  hope, 
be  remembered  only  as  forms  of  self-indulgence  and  selfish- 
ness, not  less  cruel  because  more  refined  than  the  appetite 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION         193 

of  the  sweet  girl  graduates,  professors  and  society  leaders 
of  Rome  for  the  studies  of  life  and  death  in  the  Coliseum. 
We  begin  to  see  that  it  is  not  to  little  children  alone 
that  Froebel's  ideas  are  applicable.  His  gospel  of  child- 
hood teaches  that  free  creativeness  is  at  once  the  means 
and  end  of  human  education,  and  that  the  spirit  of  play 
is  the  best  in  which  to  learn  and  work.  Our  colleges 
are  adopting  the  elective  system.  Democracy  and 
popular  education  have  gone  a  good  way  toward  realising 
Napoleon's  vision  of  "Every  career  open  to  ability." 
We  are  beginning  to  understand  that  the  lives  of  our 
successful  men  are  a  perpetual  holiday.  Not  because 
they  do  not  work,  none  work  so  hard,  but  because  they 
are  working  out  of  free  creativeness.  To  Napoleon,  war ; 
to  Scott,  romances;  to  Vanderbilt,  money-making;  to 
Wendell  Phillips,  eloquence;  these  were  play,  and  none 
are  so  blessed  as  those  who  are  working  to  make  creative- 
ness  free,  like  the  great  reformers,  emancipators,  the 
Christ,  the  Luthers,  Pestalozzis,  Mazzinis,  Garrisons.  Chil- 
dren are  learners,  and  the  wise  man  never  thinks  of  his 
education  as  finished.  The  average  age  at  which  boys 
enter  college  now  is  about  seventeen  instead  of  fourteen, 
as  a  generation  or  two  ago.  Graduate  courses  lengthen 
the  life  of  study.  Physiologically,  man  matures  more 
slowly,  and  the  period  of  childhood  is  longer,  and  adult 
life  becomes  a  graduate  course  to  carry  farther  the 
lessons  begun  in  youth.  A  new  joy  will  be  added  to  life 
when,  as  learners,  too,  we  have  become  as  little  children, 
and  the  conscious  organisation  of  society,  approaching 
more  and  more  the  model  of  the  school,  makes  pupilage 
last  with  life.  As  nature  in  all  its  books  is  always  turning 
new  leaves,  man  should  always  be  opening  his  mind  to 
receive  new  truths,  and  lending  his  hand  to  bring  it  to 
fruition.  We  do  this  now  feebly,  one  by  one,  or  in  little 


i94  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL   CREATOR 

societies,  as  the  farmers  learn  of  each  other  in  their 
country  fairs,  but  there  is  in  this  only  a  faint  gleam  of 
what  the  pleasures  and  gains  of  learning  will  be  when 
we  have  organized  it  not  only  for  all  people  but  for  all 
ages,  and  have  made  all  trades  and  professions  schools, 
and  have  raised  the  school  age  to  the  limit  of  life. 

The  greatest  promise  of  our  future  is  that  the  growth 
shall  never  be  full.  This  further  growth  must  be  along 
the  lines  which  stimulate  the  further  growth  of  others. 
Only  through  others  can  we  live,  only  through  others' 
best  can  we  become  our  best.  What  the  community  pro- 
duces for  us  is  only  those  products  which  we  exchange, 
and  only  those  people  whom  we  love.  One  cannot  be 
rich  alone.  The  spirit  of  this  growth  is  not  more  important 
than  its  forms.  As  things  are  ordered  in  this  world,  we 
might  as  well  look  to  see  life  without  matter  as  to  hope  to 
cherish  the  spirit  without  forms.  The  flight  of  forms, 
one  institution  succeeding  another  in  our  efforts  to  ex- 
press political  or  industrial  or  artistic  progress,  proves 
the  supreme  importance  of  forms.  As  much  of  our  political 
disaster  obviously  results  from  an  attempt  to  express  a  new 
spirit  through  outworn  forms,  it  is  therefore  the  duty  of 
the  state  to  provide  such  education  for  its  citizens 
as  will  enable  them  readily  to  devise  new  political 
machinery.  Communism  was  the  form  in  which  the  social 
love  of  the  first  Christians  expressed  itself.  It  is  a  form 
possible  only  in  simple  states  of  social  existence.  A 
family  can  be  a  commune.  A  band  of  believers,  small 
enough  for  everyone  to  touch  and  know  everyone  else, 
and  enthusiastic  enough  for  all  to  be  one,  can  be  a  com- 
mune. When  a  nation's  development  has  gone  so  far  that 
its  complexity  becomes  simplicity  again  the  commune 
begins  to  reappear.  It  does  not,  as  in  the  early  days, 
characterise  the  whole  of  the  social  mass  so  simply 


NEW  CONSCIENCE   IN   EDUCATION        195 

that  it  can  all  have  one  quality.  Modern  communism 
appears  in  concentric  circles  or  in  strata.  As  in  this 
activity  or  that,  the  citizens  become  of  one  mind,  with  one 
consciousness,  one  will,  and  one  common  purpose, 
the  commune  comes.  In  communism  each  contributes 
to  a  common  fund  according  to  his  ability  and  shares 
according  to  his  need.  As  civilisation  progresses,  that 
which  is  produced  by  the  common  effort  and  shared  by 
the  common  need  is  steadily  enlarging.  Modern  nations 
are  communistic  as  to  their  armies  and  navies,  their 
courts,  their  highways,  their  national  libraries.  The 
legislature  is  a  communistic  institution.  It  is  sup- 
ported by  all  according  to  their  ability  as  taxpayers, 
and  it — at  least  theoretically — gives  its  efforts  to  each 
class  of  the  community  according  to  its  need.  Modern 
municipalities  are  communes  as  to  police,  the  fire  depart- 
ment, emergency  hospitals,  street  lighting,  parks  and  the 
other  things  which  all  unite  to  make  and  use.  Sanitary 
inspection  is  communistic.  These  institutions  are  not 
communistic  but  commercial  in  their  relations  to  their 
employees.  But  as  to  the  general  body  of  citizens  they 
are  communism.  Each  is  a  common  fund  established 
and  maintained  by  all,  according  to  ability,  for  the  service 
of  all  according  to  need.  In  some  of  the  courts  for 
some  of  the  services  fees  are  charged ;  these  are  exceptions 
to  the  communism,  but  trifling  ones.  Side  by  side 
with  these  communes  have  developed  functions  in  which 
the  people  unite  to  produce,  but  the  enjoyment  of  which 
each  must  pay  for.  Street-car  lines,  gas  companies, 
power  companies,  waterworks,  owned  and  operated  by 
city  government,  are  not  communisms;  they  are  com- 
mercialisms. But  they  have  a  constant  tendency  to 
become  communisms  as  the  community  grows  richer,  and 
science  and  co-operation  reduce  cost.  Mayor  Pingree 


196  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

of  Detroit  urged  that  city  to  make  its  water  free,  as  old 
Rome  did.  Sidney  Webb  points  out  that  it  would 
be  better,  as  the  perfection  of  city  services,  like  street-car 
transportation,  increases  and  the  cost  decreases,  for  the 
community  to  lessen  its  charges  instead  of  trying  to 
make  money,  and  hints  at  a  time  when  they  may  be 
performed  for  nothing.  If  run  for  profit  to  the  point,  as 
advocated  by  some,  of  providing  all  the  money  needed 
for  the  expenses  of  government,  the  effect  would  be  a 
great  social  discrimination.  Upon  the  people  who  rode 
in  the  street  cars,  burned  the  gas,  etc.,  mostly  the  poor, 
would  thereby  be  put  all  the  taxation.  Enormous 
values  would  be  added  to  the  real  estate  of  the  rich  by 
these  improvements,  but  this  wealth  would  escape 
contributing  its  share  to  the  general  fund.  All  these 
considerations  and  others  will  push  our  cities  on  from 
municipalisations  to  communalisations.  It  is  the  busi- 
ness of  public  education  to  make  a  sane  transition. 

The  appearance  of  machinery  in  farming,  the  passing 
away  of  small  holdings,  the  bonanza  farms,  are  all  signs 
that  the  production  of  food — the  oldest  industry— is 
slipping  out  of  the  hands  of  the  small  capitalist  into  those 
of  the  large  capitalist,  evolving  from  the  era  of  competition 
into  that  of  combination.  That  transfer  brings  into 
sight  the  possibility  of  superseding  the  large  capitalist 
by  the  largest  capitalist — the  state — and  "nationalising" 
agriculture  as  it  has  already  done  in  nationalising  agri- 
cultural education.  The  fish  of  the  Great  Lakes  used  to 
be  caught  for  the  market  by  independent  fishermen, 
each  going  out  with  his  little  smack  and  nets.  Now  a 
great  concern,  with  fleets  of  steamboats,  expensive 
machinery,  square  miles  of  nets  and  acres  of  cold  storage 
has  driven  them  off,  and  ships  in  bulk  and  at  all  seasons 
to  all  the  markets.  Of  course  this  is  "  progress,"  but  two 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        197 

of  the  results  are  attracting  attention.  First,  under  this 
regime  the  fishing  grounds  are  being  destroyed  and, 
second,  it  is  more  and  more  impossible  to  get  fresh  fish  or 
palatable  fish  to  eat.  They  are  all  frozen  for  storage  and 
transportation,  and  have  to  be  thawed  out  to  be  cooked, 
and  the  natural  flavour  is  thawed  out  likewise.  When 
all  Africa  belonged  to  six  Romans,  and  the  small  farms 
of  Italy  had  been  merged  into  great  estates,  the  latifundia 
and  the  free  farmers,  displaced  by  slaves,  had  betaken 
themselves  to  the  city,  Roman  agriculture  had  reached 
the  stage  toward  which  we  seem  to  be  tending.  One  of 
our  schools  of  philosophers  assures  us  that  the  consolida- 
tions of  modern  industry  under  selfishness  are  but  inter- 
mediate steps  toward  the  assumption  of  all  by  all  for  all 
under  the  unselfishness  of  the  state.  The  Roman 
example  suggests  that  consolidations  may,  like  that  in 
the  fish  business  of  our  Great  Lakes,  be  of  a  kind  that  kills, 
and  that  when  the  new  political  altruism  is  ready  to 
take  charge  of  "Business"  there  may  be  no  Business 
left.  There  are  significant  signs  of  exhaustion  in  the 
oil,  gold,  natural  gas,  lumber  and  other  reserves  stored 
up  for  us  by  nature.  More  than  once  in  history  a  people's 
soil  has  been  used  up.  If  we  wait  for  "  natural  evolution ' ' 
to  bring  us  to  the  consummation  by  which  private  con- 
centration is  to  become  public  concentration,  may  we 
not  wait  too  long?  But  if  we  will  recognise  ourselves  as 
the  creators  of  social  evolution,  and  will  by  a  conscious 
and  timely  effort  of  the  social  will  introduce  the  higher 
energy  of  the  public  good  into  the  mechanism  of  industry, 
we  may  save  the  day.  As  an  educated  public  opinion 
abrogated  slavery  so  we  must  educate  the  public  toward 
the  abrogation  of  selfishness.  The  Romans  did  nothing  and 
there  are  no  Romans.  The  new  secret  of  self-interest  is  to 
do  for  others.  If  we  will  but  give  a  tithe  of  our  self-seeking 


198  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

and  self-destructive  business  energy  to  caring  for  our 
children  and  our  unemployed,  we  can  save  them,  and 
ourselves  and  the  state.  Every  child  should  be  reared  and 
educated  on  and  by  the  earth.  Every  man  should  have 
work.  We  have  but  to  put  our  schools  on  the  land  and 
to  establish  our  unemployed  in  labour  colonies  on  the 
land,  to  set  ourselves  far  on  the  way  toward  reconstruc- 
tion. School  farms  and  labour  farms  could  be  made  to  do 
more  than  furnish  the  models  of  a  better  social  organ- 
isation. On  them  could  be  produced  food,  raw  material 
and,  finally,  manufacturers,  which  would  be  a  considerable 
factor  in  the  supply  of  the  needs  of  the  community. 

If  we  had  hope  enough  and  ideals  high  enough  we 
could  organise  our  schools  so  that  the  youth  could  with 
the  joy  of  play  and  creative  effort  produce  a  great  part 
of  the  necessaries  of  life  for  the  community.  These 
would  not  be  "free,"  they  would  be  bought  at  the  price 
of  the  cost  of  the  schools.  With  ten  machine  men  ready 
now  to  work  for  every  citizen,  and  with  many  times  that 
number  to  be  had  by  removing  the  obstacles  of  monopoly, 
it  would  be  feasible  for  each  citizen  to  add  to  the  common 
stock  during  his  young  years  of  overflowing  energy  at 
school  and  college,  as  an  accompaniment  of  his  studies, 
at  least  as  much  wealth  as  he  would  need  for  his  subsist- 
ence through  life.  There  are  always  thousands  of  young 
people  eager  for  associated  effort;  exertion  is  a  delight; 
creative  work  would  know  a  joy  impossible  to  gymnastics, 
the  wearisome  manufacture  of  muscle  for  muscle's  sake. 
Competition  with  the  established  industries  could  be 
avoided,  partly  by  confining  the  work  of  each  such  farm 
to  its  own  support,  making  things  only  for  use,  not  for 
sale,  and  partly  by  opening  the  way  to  other  activities 
for  those  displaced.  The  men  and  energy  so  displaced 
could,  had  we  but  social  organisation,  be  easily  found 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        199 

in  work  to  supply  some  one  of  the  countless  unsatisfied 
wants  of  the  people.  This  displacement  from  old  work 
and  re-establishment,  but  only  partial  in  new,  is  going 
on  now  in  every  direction  on  account  of  new  inventions, 
consolidations,  etc.,  but  with  unspeakable  crudities  and 
cruelties — as  a  pestilence  thins  out  a  savage  population. 
These  are  making  our  industrial  society  resemble  in  its 
daily  march  the  flight  of  an  unorganised  rabble  of  misery. 
Even  the  most  conservative  admit  that  this  rout  must 
be  organised  somehow ;  it  will  not  organise  itself.  Other 
difficulties  there  are,  of  course.  But  only  along  the  line 
of  some  such  creative  policy  can  we  get  social  reconstruc- 
tion. 

One  line  in  this  social  landscape  can  be  seen  converging 
— the  line  of  education  as  a  substitute  for  politics  in 
social  mechanics.  It  is  to  education — the  education  of 
books  and  life — we  must  look  for  the  power  to  raise 
men  to  the  free  will  of  goodness. 

Socialists,  demanding  that  the  will  and  welfare  of  all 
rule  the  labours  of  all,  have  recourse  to  the  state  because 
it  is  the  only  actual  organisation  in  which  all  meet. 
To  say  that  socialism  is  governmentalism  is  as  if  one 
were  to  define  the  farmer  as  a  rake.  The  rake  is  only 
one  of  the  tools  of  his  work.  The  socialist  is  one  who 
believes  that  the  contact  of  men  in  industry  must,  like 
all  human  contact  that  is  to  endure,  be  made  a  society — 
an  association  of  friends.  He  will  use  the  government  as 
one  of  his  tools.  He  is  endeavouring  to  replace  the 
supremacy  of  selfishness  by  that  of  loving  service,  the 
principle  of  friendship.  Since  the  fundamental  principle 
of  the  state  is  that  it  exists  by  all  for  all,  the  socialist 
naturally  sees  in  it  his,  at  present,  best  instrument. 
There  is  in  human  affairs  another  great  institution  which 
is  based  on  the  same  law — the  Church.  But  the  Church 


200  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

persists  in  regarding  some  other  world  than  this  as  its 
scene  of  realisation.  The  Church  as  universal  where  the 
state  is  local,  and  as  wholly  of  love  while  the  state  is 
partly  of  force,  has  but  to  enlarge  the  geography  of 
its  beatitudes  to  include  this  world  and  it  can  take  its 
place  as  the  state  of  states.  Nations  would  then  hold 
the  relation  to  the  highest  social  institution  that  the 
communities  now  hold  to  the  nation.  That  highest 
social  form  would  be  the  Church,  universal,  uniting  all  in 
love  and  labour. 

Government  has  another  institution  seldom  referred  to 
by  radicals,  except  to  be  damned,  which  is  capable  of 
boundless  usefulness  in  Reform — the  Army.  There  is  no 
necessary  antagonism  between  military  organisation  and 
liberty,  nor  between  the  military  organisation  and 
devotion  to  the  good  of  others.  The  second  point  is 
illustrated  by  the  Salvation  Army.  The  first  finds  con- 
firmation in  one  of  the  most  remarkable  episodes  of 
modern  times.  There  was  at  least  one  standing  army 
that  stood  for  liberty,  the  Puritan  army  of  Cromwell, 
which  Cromwell  cheated  out  of  the  Commonwealth 
Republic  it  meant  to  establish.  It  was  from  the  army — 
from  the  'rank  and  file  of  the  Ironsides — first  came  the 
proposals  on  which  Parliament  acted  when  in  1649  it 
abolished  the  House  of  Lords  as  "useless  and  dangerous," 
and  abolished  the  office  of  King  as  "  unnecessary,  burden- 
some and  dangerous,"  and  established  in  their  place  the 
immortal  Council  of  State,  and  put  upon  it  the  task  of 
the  "settling  of  the  government  of  this  nation  for  the 
future  in  the  way  of  a  republic  without  King  or  House 
of  Lords."  Had  the  aspirations  and  the  plans  of  the 
Army  not  been  thwarted  by  the  prejudices  and  ambitions 
of  its  leader  the  English  Republic  would  have  preceded 
the  American  Republic  by  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven 


NEW  CONSCIENCE  IN  EDUCATION        201 

years,  and  there  would  probably  have  been  no  need  for 
the  Americans  to  establish  an  American  Republic.  In 
our  army,  as  was  shown  in  the  Civil  War,  we  have  a 
nucleus  which  can  be  expanded  instantly  to  any  size 
needed,  and  can  be  used  for  any  kind  of  work.  Soldiers 
can  build  railroads  as  well  as  kill  men.  They  could  dig 
ditches  to  irrigate  the  American  desert  as  well  as  to 
make  fortifications.  An  army  mobilised  to  create  wealth 
instead  of  destroying  it  could  be  certainly  self-supporting 
under  the  economical  and  efficient  methods  of  our  Amer- 
ican system.  A  call  for  volunteers  among  the  unem- 
ployed for  a  peaceful  war  with  such  enemies  of  themselves 
and  the  race  as  starvation,  disease,  dirt  and  poverty 
would  be  answered  by  millions.  The  military  power  of 
conscription  is  available  for  dealing  with  the  chronic 
tramp.  Only  by  organising  really  and  adequately  the 
opportunity  for  work  can  society  get  a  clear  moral  right 
to  compel  those  to  work  who  will  not  work  voluntarily, 
and  when  society  has  created  this  opportunity  for  all  it 
should  put  the  relentless  but  merciful  hand  of  compulsion 
upon  all  who  would  shirk.  If  millions  of  men  were 
willing  to  leave  their  work  in  1861  and  volunteer  to  go 
to  the  front  to  kill  and  be  killed,  we  cannot  doubt  that 
the  millions  who  are  now  out  of  work  would  volunteer,  if 
given  the  chance,  to  join  the  army  of  the  commonwealth 
to  save  and  to  be  saved.  We  not  only  have  in  our 
hands — in  our  schools,  courts,  cities,  armies,  state — the 
levers  that  can  move  our  world  to  better  uses,  but  we 
have  the  places  on  which  to  rest  the  levers.  Not  even 
the  will  to  begin  is  lacking,  we  wait  only  the  word. 

Our  individualism  will  never  surrender  itself.  Asso- 
ciation is  the  secret  of  modern  progress,  and  modern 
personality  demands  a  form  of  association  which  will  not 
force  upon  the  citizens  unwelcome  contact  with  others. 


202  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

nor  the  unenduring  surveillance  and  militarism  of  a 
policed  industry,  unendurable  if  policed  and  platooned 
even  though  the  industry  be  by  and  for  all.  This  freedom 
of  individualism  and  harmony  of  association  can  be  had 
only  in  our  present  conditions  through  the  state.  Through 
it  we  can  run  street  cars,  gas  companies,  public  libraries, 
laundries,  music  halls,  in  co-operation  with  all  our 
neighbours,  and  yet  be  free  to  come  and  go  regardless 
of  their  prejudices  and  magnetisms. 

To  do  creative  work,  to  be  released  from  the  crowds, 
to  be  freed  from  fear,  to  create  as  long  as  life  lasts, 
and  to  have  life  a  perpetual  school;  to  get  back  to  the 
simple  but  most  expensive  luxuries  of  pure  soil,  unsmoked 
sunsets  and  bread  and  sleep  that  need  no  tonics;  to 
stand  face  to  face  with  the  beauty  of  the  morning  and 
the  smiles  of  an  uncorrupted  and  unsuppressed  fellow- 
man — this  is  the  future  the  Coming  Religion  is  praying 
for,  and  that  the  new  education  may  achieve. 


CHAPTER  IX 

A   NEW   POLITICAL   ECONOMY   PREDICTING   A   NEW   WEALTH 

CHRISTIANITY  was  a  new  political  economy.  It  was  a 
vast  economic  revolution.  It  was  a  war  against  the 
wealth,  the  relations  of  labour  and  capital  and  the  social 
position  of  the  people  of  the  old  order,  as  well  as  a  war 
against  its  art  and  government  and  religion.  It  gave  their 
own  souls  to  the  masses,  and  it  was  the  first  to  write  their 
names  in  honour  upon  their  gravestones  and  call  upon 
posterity  to  remember  them  because  they  had  been 
"good  workers."  The  pagan  world  taught  that  labour 
was  incompatible  with  virtue,  but  the  new  political 
economy  established  a  brotherhood,  the  church,  within 
whose  boundaries  the  poorest  was  equal  to  the  highest 
and  richest.  It  made  him  eligible  to  rise  to  the  proudest 
posts — the  slave  could  become  pope.  The  bands  of 
brethren  carried  around  the  world  the  doctrine  by  which 
it  taught  men  to  live — laborare  est  orare — to  labour  is  to 
pray;  work  is  worship. 

Revolutions  do  more  than  never  go  backward.  They 
never  cease  to  go  forward.  One  good  revolution,  like 
one  good  turn,  deserves  another.  Christianity  came  out 
of  paganism  and  the  republic  came  out  of  despotism. 
Something  comes  out  of  Christianity  and  the  republic 
better  than  either.  Whatever  this  may  be,  it  will  not 
be  less  a  new  political  economy  than  Christianity  was. 
It  will,  like  it,  be  much  more.  It  doth  not  yet  appear 
what  we  shall  be,  but  the  fountains  of  the  great  deeps 
of  opinion  are  being  broken  up  in  political  assembly,  the 

203 


204  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

synod,  the  laboratory,  the  parlour,  the  studio,  the  work- 
shop; sciences,  constitutions,  manners,  livelihoods,  the- 
ologies, art  and  arts — all  are  whirling  on  to  new  consum- 
mations. We  are  in  the  rapids  of  a  new  era.  The 
world  has  already,  though  young,  had  many  calendars. 
There  are  others  before  us;  perhaps  near.  We  have  had 
one  Son  of  Man ;  we  are  to  have  many  millions,  as  many 
millions  as  there  are  men.  The  coming  for  which  the 
world  is  now  waiting  is  not  the  second  coming  of  one  Son, 
but  the  coming  of  all  the  sons  of  men,  a  perpetual  advent 
in  every  good  man  and  every  good  deed.  Every  good 
day  a  Sunday  and  every  good  book  a  bible,  every  good 
man  a  redeemer. 

That  economic  era  which  found  a  soul  in  the  common 
man  has  for  its  next  step  the  spiritual  era  now  rising 
to  guarantee  that  soul  a  body  and  a  society  fit  for  a 
soul's  habitation.  Christianity  gave  him  a  place  in  the 
congregation  of  the  righteous;  humanity  will  expand 
that  congregation  into  the  commonwealth  for  which  the 
republic  has  been  an  initiation. 

Christianity  made  men  brothers  in  the  church ;  humanity 
will  make  them  brothers  everywhere  and  in  all  works  and 
fruits.  Christianity  promised  the  workers  heaven;  hu- 
manity will  fulfill  that  blessed  promise  by  putting  into 
every  man's  hands  every  tool  needed  to  begin  to  build 
that  heaven  here.  It  will  make  for  him  a  calendar 
in  which  this  world  is  dated  as  the  next  world  and  each 
to-day  as  an  anniversary  of  the  life  immortal — the  life 
we  are  living  now. 

Christianity  pointed  to  a  creator  afar  off; humanity 
adds  the  revelation  to  each  loyal  member  of  its  working 
hosts  of  a  creator  also  within  himself,  and  to  the  people 
of  a  divinity  within  themselves  to  shape  their  own  ends. 

The  economic  era,   which  we  reckon  from  the  year 


NEW  POLITICAL   ECONOMY  205 

A.  D.  i,  has  spoken  in  the  language  of  the  sacred  mys- 
teries, clothed  itself  in  the  robes  of  angels;  has  housed 
in  temples,  and  has  protected  its  holy  mission  by  all 
the  awe-inspiring  illusions  of  ecclesiastics.  The  spiritual 
era  on  which  we  enter,  that  which  will  expand  and 
fortify  the  divine  already  declared  in  man,  revive  and 
carry  to  a  more  glorious  fruitage  all  the  emancipations 
of  the  past,  lift  men  to  use  for  their  daily  chores  the 
heavenly  fire  that  only.  God  has  been  able  to  handle, 
has  been  delivering  its  message  in  the  humble  accents 
of  the  economist  and  the  reformer.  The  body  is  a  stage 
of  the  spirit;  the  economic  and  the  spiritual  are  in- 
separable. 

Turgot  said:  "God,  by  giving  to  man  wants  and 
making  his  recourse  to  work  necessary  to  supply  them, 
has  made  the  right  to  work  the  property  of  every  man; 
and  this  property  is  the  first,  the  most  sacred,  the  most 
inprescriptible  of  all."  This  right  to  work  is  the  right 
to  worship.  The  clink  of  the  anvil  and  the  hum  of  the 
harvest  field,  the  music  of  the  poet  and  the  meditations 
of  the  inventor  are  chords  in  the  anthem  of  creation  and 
the  hymns  of  praise.  The  utterance  of  life  is  a  song,  a 
symphony  of  nature. 

God  made;  man  makes.  In  being  born  to  labour, 
man  was  born  creator.  It  is  the  toiling  millions  in  the 
field  and  forest  and  study,  on  the  sea  and  shore  and  in 
the  city,  with  the  spindle  and  hammer,  the  plough,  the 
pen,  gathering  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  rearing  the  races 
of  men  and  animals,  exploring,  inventing,  pruning, 
combining,  cross-fertilising,  re-creating  men  who  are  the 
incarnation  of  God,  the  only  true  and  universal  church. 
The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  not  to  be  taken  by  storm  but 
by  day's  labour.  Honest  labour,  useful  labour,  labour 
under  the  law,  is  the  spiritual  utterance  of  the  energies  of 


2o6  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

man.  This  is  a  sacred  right — as  Turgot  says,  "  the  most 
sacred  of  all."  The  right  to  do  the  divine  will  must  be  as 
bravely  upheld  as  the  right  to  pray  to  it.  The  "holy 
wars"  that  have  been  fought  to  maintain  the  right  to 
worship  according  to  the  dictates  of  conscience  are  not 
a  whit  more  holy  than  the  struggle  to  establish  all  men 
in  their  right  to  do,  as  the  ten  commandments  say, 
"all"  their  work.  The  right  to  pray,  the  right  to  think, 
the  right  to  vote,  the  right  to  work — this  is  the  line  of 
march  of  the  crusaders  of  progress. 

Around  the  world  begins  to  roll  the  roar  of  the  multi- 
tudes preparing  to  establish  each  other  in  that  right  to 
freedom  of  faculty  and  opportunity;  that  right  to  equal 
ownership  in  land  and  labour  and  the  other  "commons" 
of  the  people;  that  right  to  be,  to  grow,  to  love  and 
be  loved,  to  serve  and  be  served,  to  create  and  be  created, 
to  teach  and  be  taught;  that  right  to  rest — which  is  all 
summed  up  in  the  old  phrase,  the  right  to  work.  The 
proudest  crown  of  Europe  carries  on  it  the  motto,  "  Ich 
Dien,"  I  serve.  All  tne  titles,  all  the  property,  all  the 
franchises,  all  the  vested  tribute-rights  have  no  other 
legal  sanction  than  this — that  they  serve. 

The  oldest  book  in  the  world — the  book  of  Ptah  Hotep, 
the  Egyptian — gives  property  no  better  title  than 
this,  that  it  is  a  stewardship  for  mankind.  The  people, 
too,  demand  this  privilege  of  the  ruler  of  England,  this 
right  to  serve  and  be  served.  They  are  starving  for 
the  lack  of  services  from  others ;  they  are  suffocating  with 
the  energies  denied  utterance  in  service  for  others. 

"The  right  to  work!"  "The  right  to  work!"  "The 
right  to  work!"  What  is  the  source  of  this  "right"? 
Its  source  is  the  same  as  that  of  all  the  other  "rights  of 
man" — the  up-welling  soul  aspiring  to  be  more.  Like 
the  right  to  pray,  to  speak,  to  associate,  this  right  to 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  207 

create  the  destiny  the  multitude  knows  it  can  create  and 
for  which  it  sees  in  all  the  overflowing  riches  of  man  and 
nature  all  the  needed  raw  material  of  manufacture,  is  a 
revelation  from  on  high — the  heights  of  man. 

It  is  written  in  the  holy  scriptures  of  the  people's 
aspirations,  where  every  other  right  was  found  prophesied. 
This  Holy  Word  speaks  from  generation  to  generation  in 
humanity's  outreaching  aspirations — the  aspirations  of 
a  creature  which  lived  in  the  water  and  aspired  to 
breathe  the  air,  lived  in  the  air  and  aspired  to  be  a  man, 
became  a  man  and  aspired  to  be  a  people,  and,  become  a 
people,  will  still  aspire.  I  think,  therefore  I  am ;  I  aspire, 
therefore  I  am  a  man;  I  am  a  man,  and  therefore  create; 
I  create,  and  therefore  have  a  "right  to  work." 

Dante's  universal  mind  lays  the  foundation  for  the 
whole  structure  of  international  democracy  and  the 
universal  church  in  pointing  out  that  the  realisation  of 
humanity's  possibilities  cannot  be  attained  by  any  one 
man,  nor  single  family,  nor  single  neighbourhood,  nor 
single  city,  nor  single  kingdom ;  only  the  entire  multitude 
of  the  human  race  can  operate  it  to  its  highest  powers; 
and  it  is  the  proper  work  of  the  whole  human  race  to 
set  in  action  its  whole  capacity.  Therefore  the  con- 
scious people,  aspiring  to  be  more,  lift  the  banner  of 
the  new  crusade,  the  new  revelation,  the  new  command- 
ment, the  new  state,  the  new  religion,  the  new  political 
economy,  and  prepare  to  establish — as  the  next  great 
institution  of  civilisation — the  right  to  work,  of  all,  by 
all,  for  all. 

The  men  of  honour  who  could  be  overcome,  Crom- 
well knew,  only  by  men  of  religion,  were  like  the  men 
who  are  to-day  denying  the  people's  rights.  They  are 
men  of  honours,  not  honour;  honours  of  possession, 
franchise,  vested  right,  office,  good  society.  They 


208  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

can  be  overcome  only  by  those  who  have  a  higher  faith, 
a  more  passionate  motive,  a  policy  that  sweeps  in  the 
reinforcing  support  of  the  whole  people.  Those  who  hate 
a  system  worse  than  they  hate  the  devil  will  always 
overcome  those  who  only  love  it  as  well  as  their  dinner. 
Those  to  whom  life  is  a  worship  are  invincible  before 
those  to  whom  it  is  only  a  dicker. 

All  its  thinking  men  knew  that  Athens  was  rotting 
in  the  days  of  Pericles  and  Plato  and  Socrates;  and  the 
question  all  the  men  of  action  and  philosophy  were  de- 
bating was  how  could  the  city  be  saved?  Only,  said 
Socrates,  by  rinding  a  new  moral  inspiration.  It  is  to 
the  new  conscience  that  the  world  always  turns  for  the 
way  out.  But  the  "  men  of  honours  "  sneer  at  conscience. 
It  is  "good  in  theory"  but  it  is  "not  practicable."  The 
whole  basis  of  modern  industrial  society,  and  that  is  to 
say  the  whole  social  basis,  rests  on  the  cynical  scepticism 
that  conscience  and  business  cannot  be  reconciled. 
Business  is  business  and  must  not  be  interfered  with  by 
transcendentalism.  So  chivalry  was  once  chivalry,  and 
kingship,  kingship,  and  not  to  be  called  to  account  by 
fanatics. 

All  the  wickedness  and  cruelties  and  wastes  of  the 
private  wars  and  despotism  and  popular  slaveries  of  the 
world  of  the  common  toil  are  kept  vested  by  the  athe- 
istical doctrine  that  the  heart  of  humanity  is  so  bad  that. 
Tennyson's  golden  year  can  never  come  when  "the 
good  of  all  shall  be  the  rule  of  each."  The  reformer 
is  a  poet,  a  creator.  He  sees  visions  and  fills  the  people 
with  their  beauty;  and  by  the  contagion  of  virtue  his 
creative  impulse  spreads  among  the  mass,  and  it  begins 
to  climb  and  build.  The  history  of  mankind  is  the 
growth  of  one  new  conscience  after  another.  Man 
suppresses  passion  after  passion  and  achieves  virtue 


NEW  POLITICAL   ECONOMY  209 

after  virtue.  He  makes  the  self-interest  of  the  lower 
strike  its  flag  to  the  self-interest  of  the  higher. 

Among  some  savages,  Parkman  tells  us,  any  squaw 
is  the  legitimate  prey  of  any  buck  who  can  catch  her 
as  she  goes  to  the  spring  or  looks  for  firewood ;  but  civilised 
man  is  harnessing  the  strongest  of  the  dynamos  within 
him  and  putting  his  sexual  self-interests  under  the 
control  of  the  individual  conscience  of  chastity  and  the 
social  conscience  of  courtship  and  marriage. 

Men  have  learned  by  hundreds  of  millions  to  give 
up  the  self-interest  that  rages  for  private  vengence,  and 
the  lawsuit  is  substituted  for  the  vendetta.  Stockholders 
of  the  English  coal  companies  subscribed  in  1893  to  the 
funds  of  the  miners  who  were  striking  against  them  for 
the  living  wage.  Man,  who  has  created  these  sexual, 
legal,  social  and  a  hundred  other  consciences  of  patriot- 
ism, etiquette,  the  home,  can  by  so  much  the  more 
easily  rise  to  the  virtue  of  preferring  the  public  good  to 
private  advantage — the  economic  conscience.  "We  wor- 
ship the  soldier,"  says  Ruskin,  "not  because  he  goes 
forth  to  slay,  but  to  be  slain."  Men  die  for  their  country, 
their  friend,  however  sweet  it  is  to  live.  Mankind  has 
never  been  so  low  that  it  did  not  breed  its  due  percentage 
of  those  who  would  die  for  their  tribe,  their  gods,  their 
lovers,  their  trust.  "The  glorious  company  of  martyrs," 
says  the  prayer-book.  Every  member  of  that  glorious 
company  is  an  immortal  witness  to  the  safety  of  the  appeal 
to  the  economic  conscience.  Every  martyr,  every 
patriot,  every  friend  who  has  laid  down  his  life  for  his 
friend,  every  hero,  everyone  who  helps  his  neighbour  at 
the  table  before  himself  is  a  pioneer,  a  prophet  or  a  disciple, 
leading  the  way  to  the  golden  year  in  which  the  "  good  of 
all  shall  be  the  rule  of  each." 

Our  gods,  our  heroes,  our  patriots,  our  pure  ones  are 


2io  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

our  representative  men  and  women,  and  our  worship  of 
them  is  a  revelation  of  the  godlike,  the  heroic,  the  patriotic, 
the  pure  in  us.  Travelers  see  abroad  what  they  bring 
within  them  from  home,  and  the  worshiper  discovers 
himself  in  what  he  adores.  A  mankind  whose  literature 
and  religion  are  nothing  but  a  commemoration  of  those 
who  have  ruled  their  own  spirits  has  written  on  every 
page  of  its  past  its  conquest  of  self-interests,  passions, 
prejudices. 

Preachers  of  pessimism  and  the  gospel  of  despair  tell 
men  that  in  their  economic  lives  together  they  can  never 
obey  any  higher  law  than  that  of  their  natural  ferocities, 
appetites  and  selfishness.  The  cure  for  such  pessimism 
and  despair,  as  for  all  doubt  and  discouragement  about 
the  human  future,  is  a  long  look  backward. 

A  long  look  backward  shows  us  the  first  recorded 
whisper  against  slavery,  the  protest  of  a  few  impractical 
Greeks,  mentioned  by  Aristotle,  2500  years  ago,  gathering 
strength  with  every  age,  going  on  from  emancipation  to 
emancipation,  with  gigantic  historic  steps  that  no  barrier 
could  arrest. 

A  long  look  backward  shows  the  woman,  the  child, 
the  labourer,  all  the  last  ones,  becoming  first.  It 
shows  us  the  republic  broadening  itself  from  experiment 
to  experiment,  every  breakdown  a  lesson;  the  Greek 
republics  bettered  by  the  Italian,  the  Italian  by  the 
Dutch,  and  our  forefathers  taking  the  good  of  each  and 
adding  their  own. 

A  long  look  backward  is  the  best  answer  to  those 
who  would  push  down  and  back  man,  aspiring  to  rise 
out  of  the  animal  stage  of  business  and  industry,  a 
worse  than  animal  stage;  for  as  Darwin,  Kropotkin  and 
every  philosopher  have  shown,  animals  give  each  other 
mutual  aid  and  have  a  conscience  above  self-interest 


NEW  POLITICAL   ECONOMY  211 

"Those  communities,"  Darwin  said,  "which  included  the 
greatest  number  of  the  most  sympathetic  members 
would  flourish  best."  Civilisation  is  simply  applied  con 
science.  Like  Launcelot  Gobbo,  all  men  are  distracted 
by  the  conflicting  voices  of  Conscience  and  the  Fiend ;  but, 
unlike  Gobbo,  men  in  the  long  run  stay  by  conscience. 

It  is  hard  to  account  for  the  martyr,  but  you  can 
always  count  on  him.  The  white  corpuscles  in  the 
blood  science  describes  to  us  as  the  defenders  and  martyrs 
of  physical  welfare.  If  an  invading  microbe  threatens  a 
wound  or  some  failing  organ  the  white  corpuscle  hurries 
to  the  spot  and  battles  with  him  to  the  death.  It  is  the 
dead  bodies  of  the  white-plumed  knights  of  the  home 
guard  in  the  blood  that  we  see  flowing  forth  from  wound 
or  sore.  Their  maneuvres  in  the  struggle  display  almost 
human  intelligence.  They  do  more  than  maintain  the 
wager  of  battle  with  hostile  germs.  If  an  organ  of  the 
body  is  cut  off  by  accident  from  the  supplies  of  blood  and 
nutriment  that  would  ordinarily  come  to  it,  the  white 
corpuscles,  notified  by  some  mysterious  telegraphy,  hasten 
to  the  relief.  They  can  pass  in  undiscovered  ways 
where  the  blood  cannot  go,  and  they  throw  themselves  in 
millions  into  the  beleaguered  spot  and  offer  themselves 
there  as  food  to  be  eaten  to  maintain  the  local  life  until 
health  or  death  decides  the  issue.  They  are  the  altruists 
within.  Man,  who  is  operated  by  altruists  within  and 
worships  altruists  without,  need  not  listen  to  those  who 
tell  him  he  can  never  become  an  altruist  himself. 

George  Smith,  of  Coalville,  was  born  one  of  the  brick- 
yard children  among  the  dreary  clay  pits  of  the  County 
of  Stafford,  England.  He  was  one  of  the  swarm  of 
little  ones  who  began  their  life  in  the  brickyards  at 
six  years  of  age,  carrying  on  their  heads  40-pound  lumps 
of  clay,  as  big  as  themselves,  or  toiling  about  the  hot 


212  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

and  exhausting  flues  fourteen  hours  a  day,  and,  in  addition, 
often  working  all  night  at  the  kilns.  Once,  after  doing 
his  usual  day's  work,  this  child  had  to  carry  brick  and 
clay  all  night  back  and  forth  between  the  makers  and  the 
kilns.  That  night  he  carried  a  total  of  five  and  a  half  tons 
of  clay,  and  in  doing  it  had  to  walk  fourteen  miles.  From 
his  fifth  or  sixth  year  to  his  eighteenth  year  George 
Smith  traveled  more  than  80,000  miles  in  connection 
with  his  work — more  than  three  times  around  the  world. 
His  sufferings  lighted  in  him  the  fires  of  a  passionate 
resolve  to  save  others. 

He  began  to  agitate,  to  write  letters  to  the  press,  to 
plead  with  such  influential  men  as  he  could  reach.  He 
had  educated  himself  by  the  light  of  the  kiln  fires  he 
watched  at  night.  His  "Cry  of  the  Children"  and 
other  appeals  by  pen  and  speech  caught  the  ear  of  the 
public,  and  the  public  compelled  parliament  to  act. 

Laws  were  passed  bringing  the  slaves  of  the  brick- 
yards under  the  protection  of  the  awakened  social  con- 
science, and  a  new  source  of  wealth — a  fuller  manhood 
and  womanhood  for  these  ravaged  children — was  opened 
for  England.  The  old  political  economy  had  been  unable 
to  see  the  financial  folly  of  burning  out  the  red  of  the 
cheeks  of  its  children  to  burn  it  into  the  red  of  the  bricks 
and  tiles. 

While  he  was  working  for  others  with  such  wonderful 
energy  and  success,  Smith  had  been  faithful  and  successful 
in  his  own  work.  He  had  risen  to  be  the  manager  of  an 
important  concern  in  the  brick  business,  where  he  was 
making  a  large  profit  for  his  employers.  He  had  a 
beautiful  home  with  green  lawns,  avenues  of  trees, 
gardens  full  of  fruit,  a  porter's  lodge ;  he  had  his  horse, 
carriage  and  coachman.  He  did  not  rest  with  his  victory 
for  the  brickyard  children,  but  turned  at  once  to  rescue 


NEW  POLITICAL   ECONOMY  213 

another  large  class  of  children — the  miserable  boys  and 
girls  of  the  canal-boat  population — beaten,  overworked, 
wandering  up  and  down  with  the  canal  boats  over  the 
thousands  of  miles  of  English  canals,  sleeping  in  the 
cubby  holes  of  the  boats;  uneducated,  forlorn.  The 
sorrows  of  these  children  had  entered  into  his  soul  and  he 
pledged  himself  to  set  them,  too,  free.  But  the  spirit  of 
vested  interests  roused  itself  to  strike  him  down.  His 
employers  one  dark  night  called  him  before  them  and 
demanded  that  he  give  up  his  work  for  the  children  or 
his  position.  "  I  cannot  stop  my  work  for  the  children," 
he  said,  and  they  discharged  him. 

George  Smith  went  out  of  his  handsome  house  and 
beautiful  grounds  and,  step  by  step,  descended  through 
every  grade  of  poverty.  He  was  made  a  bankrupt.  He 
had  to  take  his  family  to  a  wretched  hovel  which  could 
not  keep  out  rain  or  cold.  His  children  had  no  shoes 
to  go  to  school.  They  suffered  for  food  and  were  glad 
to  get  red  herring  for  Sunday  dinner.  "  Scandals,  lies, 
persecution,  temptation,  aching  head,  sleepless  nights, 
insults,  snubs,  hunger,  fatigue,  sobs  and  poverty" — 
these  were  the  ransom  he  and  his  family  had  to  pay 
for  his  devotion  to  the  cause  of  the  human  wreckage 
of  the  canals.  But  he  kept  on  with  the  devotion  of  the 
religious  enthusiast  he  was — an  apostle  of  a  "right  to 
work"  that  shall  be  worship,  not  profanation.  In  his 
diary  for  the  last  day  of  1876  he  said:  "Made  a  bank- 
rupt :  got  a  commission  to  inquire  into  the  canal  question." 
Here  again  he  was  successful,  and  after  six  years'  hard 
work  lecturing,  writing,  lobbying  constantly  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  his  bill  was  passed  and  the  canal-boat  waifs 
were  brought  in  under  the  same  legal  shelter  he  had  got 
for  the  brickyard  children. 

But  there  was  more  work  to  do.     He  had  rescued 


2i4  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  GREATOR 

thousands  of  little  children  from  cruel  bondage  in  the 
brickyards;  he  had  made  education  and  a  decent  life 
possible  for  tens  of  thousands  of  children  in  canal  boats ; 
and  now  he  turned  to  bring  into  the  tent  of  civilisation 
the  children  of  the  gypsies  and  traveling  vans  and 
shows  who  were  growing  up  into  the  very  scum  of  the 
earth.  In  this  work  he  died,  poor,  but  famous  and  be- 
loved; known  throughout  the  length  of  England  and 
beyond ;  listened  to  by  Parliament,  the  press,  the  public ; 
honoured  by  testimonials  in  which  the  queen,  men  and 
women  of  title  and  commoners  were  all  glad  to  unite. 
His  only  title  was  that  by  which  he  was  known  up  and 
down  the  Midland  counties,  where  he  had  gone  on  his 
mission  of  emancipation — "The  Children's  Friend."  He 
sprang  from  the  poor;  he  lived  and  laboured,  night  and 
day,  among  the  poor;  and  he  died  and  made  his  grave 
with  the  poor. 

The  martyr,  like  the  inventor,  is  the  best  investor- 
Palissy,  the  Huguenot  potter,  burning  up  his  furniture 
to  keep  his  kilns  going;  Goodyear,  impoverishing  himself 
to  win  the  secrets  of  rubber ;  Garrison,  giving  his  country 
the  free  man  who  can  do  twice  as  much  work  as  the 
enslaved  labourer;  George  Smith,  causing  men  and 
women  to  grow  where  there  would  else  have  been  only 
runts — were  far  better  economists  than  the  men  who 
derided  them. 

The  world  has  advanced  to  the  point  where  it  hunts 
for  inventors,  and  waits  respectfully  for  the  revelations 
of  divine  truth  made  by  a  Morse,  a  Stephenson  and  a 
Tesla.  A  little  more  social  science  and,  instead  of 
persecuting  them,  we  shall  similarly  hunt  for  reformers, 
and  shall  cherish  as  our  most  precious  social  functionaries 
the  geniuses  who  can  tell  us  how  to  make  better  machines 
and  run  them  better.  The  martyr,  the  pioneer,  the 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  215 

hero,  is  the  genius  who  sees  first  and  does  first.  We 
have  only  to  read  our  histories  to  know  that  we  can 
always  be  sure  of  men  who  will  throw  themselves,  like 
the  white  corpuscles  of  the  blood,  where  they  are  needed , 
as  George  Smith  did,  and  as  all  the  company  of  martyrs 
have  done,  and  to  know  that  we  cannot  prevent  them. 
Fire,  hanging,  torture,  crucifixion,  nothing  will  keep 
them  back  from  giving  up  their  lives  for  the  greater  life 
of  which  the  news  has  reached  them.  Of  all  facts  to  be 
reckoned  with  in  this  world  of  facts  they  are  most  real. 
The  martyr  is  the  pioneer  of  welfare.  The  martyrs,  the 
Socialists,  the  labour  agitators,  the  strikers,  the  anarchists, 
the  profit  sharers,  the  co-operators,  who  are  teaching 
us  the  industrial  conscience,  are  the  precursors  of  the 
joys  and  prosperities  of  the  co-operative  commonwealth. 

The  advantage  of  all  is  a  greater  good  to  the  individual 
than  any  dividend  he  can  get  from  his  own  poor  selfishness. 
The  martyrs  have  been  the  leaders  who  saw  this  truth 
so  clearly  that  they  had  to  live  it  though  they  died  for  it. 
Conscience  is  first  a  martyr,  then  a  millionaire. 

The  Quakers  and  the  Shakers  renounce  the  world 
and  all  its  pleasures  only  to  find  themselves  overflowing 
with  riches  in  a  few  generations.  The  Pilgrims  and  the 
Puritans  turn  their  backs  on  the  treasure  of  Europe  and 
establish  in  poverty  and  a  humble  spirit  an  empire  which 
soon  comes  to  outdazzle  all  others.  It  is  one  of  the 
paradoxes  of  human  affairs  that  a  new  welfare  always 
has  to  be  thus  ushered  in  by  a  new  woe. 

The  religion  of  labour,  which  preaches  the  spiritual 
sacredness  of  man's  economic  energies,  has,  and  will 
have,  its  full  roster  of  martyrs.  Many  classic  words 
have  to  be  spoken  to  inspire  the  classic  deed,  but  the 
classic  deeds  are  already  numerous  on  the  records  of  the 
people  in  their  upreachmgs  to  lift  themselves  into  the 


216  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

air  where  they  will  be  able  to  live  a  larger  life — the 
life  where  they  can  serve  and  be  served  with  all  the 
riches  of  human  nature  and  other  nature. 

Every  faculty  of  man  is  a  commandment  to  do  its 
work;  every  gift  of  nature  is  an  offer  of  grace.  To 
keep  men  from  using  these  faculties  and  these  resources 
is  to  disobey  commandments  as  sacred  as  any  written 
on  the  Hebrew  tables  of  stone ;  it  is  a  refusal  of  grace 
and  a  denial  of  God.  An  economic  system  which  heaps 
up  idle  money  in  the  banks  and  idle  men  in  the  streets 
is  spiritually  a  sin,  economically  a  waste,  and  we  will 
make  it  legal  outlawry. 

No  right  is  vested,  no  law  valid,  no  government  con- 
stitutional, no  person  to  be  respected,  that  stands  in 
the  way  of  the  determination  of  mankind  to  realise  its 
full  self.  The  resolute  heart  of  humanity,  which  has 
never  hesitated  to  annihilate  churches  and  governments 
to  save  religion  and  patriotism,  still  lives  and  is  still 
resolute  to  save.  The  Hollanders,  under  William  of 
Orange,  resisted  Phillip  II.  in  the  name  of  the  emperor. 
They  were  loyal  to  the  empire  of  justice  and  right,  to 
which  he  had  become  a  traitor  and  a  rebel. 

The  Puritans  of  England  argued  that  when  the  king 
broke  the  covenant  of  kingship  he  ceased  to  be  king,  and 
they  abolished  him  without  compensation.  Milton  and 
Vane,  with  their  matchless  wits  and  knowledge  of  the 
lower  and  higher  law,  supplied  the  commonwealth  with 
all  the  arguments  it  needed  to  justify  itself  for  turning 
"regal  bondage  into  a  free  commonwealth,"  in  Milton's 
words.  "The  king  himself,"  said  Milton,  "had  unbound 
us."  The  covenant  with  him,  he  said,  had  been  to 
preserve  the  king's  person  and  authority,  in  order 
to  preserve  for  the  people  the  true  religion  and  true 
liberties,  not  "  to  bring  in  upon  our  consciences  a  popish 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  217 

religion;  upon  our  liberties  thralldom;  upon  our  lives 
destruction." 

The  people,  therefore,  "took  themselves  not  bound 
by  the  light  of  nature  or  religion  to  any  former  covenant 
from  which  the  king  himself  had  more  and  more  unbound 
us."  They  were  "bound  by  the  law  of  nature  only, 
the  only  law  of  laws  truly  and  properly  to  all  mankind 
fundamental;  the  beginning  of  all  government;  to  which 
no  parliament  or  people  that  will  thoroughly  reform 
but  may  and  must  have  recourse." 

Man's  nature  is  one  through  all  its  energies — those 
which  feed  the  body  as  well  as  those  which  feed  the 
soul.  We  can  unlock  every  argument  used  in  the  past 
for  religious  and  political  liberty  and  find  therein  the 
substance  of  all  the  arguments  needed  for  economic 
liberty. 

Our  covenant  with  capital  was  for  stewardship,  and 
the  covenant  has  been  "unbound."  The  stewards  have 
changed  their  duty  to  feed  and  clothe  into  a  right  to  tax. 
The  children  of  the  poor  march  by  regiments  every 
morning  in  every  city  to  work  for  the  stewards  who 
ought  to  be  working  for  them.  Millions  of  men  have 
the  stewards  shut  out  of  our  mines  and  our  factories, 
our  woods  and  our  fields,  not  because  human  necessities 
have  had  enough  but  because  their  treasonable  avarice 
has  not  had  enough. 

"Ancient  foundations,"  said  Vane,  "when  once  they 
become  destructive  to  those  very  ends  for  which  they 
were  first  ordained  and  prove  hindrances  to  the  good 
and  enjoyment  of  human  societies,  to  the  true  worship 
of  God  and  the  safety  of  the  people,  are  for  their  sakes 
and  upon  the  same  reasons  to  be  altered  for  which  they 
were  first  laid."  Milton's  books  and  Cromwell's  battles 
were  arguing  the  cause  of  the  American  people  to-day  in 


218  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  conflict  with  the  powers  which  are  choking  our 
spiritual  life  by  choking  our  industrial  life.  The  institu- 
tions of  the  economic  world  exist  only  as  the  churches 
and  kingships  existed — for  the  good  of  the  people.  The 
public  good  is  the  only  warranty  deed  for  any  property. 
The  legislatures,  common  councils,  courts — delegates  of 
the  people — can  only  quit-claim.  They  can  convey  only 
the  rights  they  were  authorised  to  convey.  They  cannot 
alienate  the  inalienable. 

The  "survival  of  the  fittest"  is  our  doctrine.  The 
one  fittest  to  the  environment  will  survive  in  that  environ- 
ment. In  an  atmosphere  of  carbonic  acid  gas  corpses 
are  the  fittest.  In  an  atmosphere  of  degeneration 
degenerates  are  the  fittest.  Among  the  Thugs  of  India, 
or  the  trusts  of  America,  the  best  Thug  is  the  fittest. 

The  "fittest  survive"  is  an  expression  which  should 
never  be  used  by  a  scientific  man  before  a  popular  audience 
without  making  it  clear  that  the  word  fittest  is  used  only 
in  an  evolutionary,  mechanical,  not  at  all  a  moral,  sense. 
It  means  that  among  the  cruel,  the  cruelest;  among  the 
mean,  the  meanest;  among  the  greedy,  the  greediest; 
among  the  selfish,  the  most  selfish,  will  survive.  The 
phrase  and  the  doctrine  it  covers  leave  unchallenged  the 
power  of  man  to  change  the  social  environment  so  that 
a  better  kind  of  fittest  shall  survive.  Man  has  changed 
the  social  environment,  and  the  fittest  at  once  change 
correspondingly. 

There  is  a  power  in  nature  called  natural  selection 
which  can  produce  new  kinds  of  plants  and  animals. 
There  is  a  power  in  society  of  social  selection  which  can 
create  new  environment  and  make  over  again  men  and 
communities.  Social  selection  is  already  at  work  every- 
where in  the  world  of  organised  humanity. 

Arthur  Young,  travelling  through  France  on  the  eve 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  219 

of  the  French  revolution,  has  left  in  his  "Travels  in 
France"  descriptions  of  the  misery  of  the  people  that 
have  been  quoted  for  a  hundred  years  and  have  become 
the  picture  of  the  degradation  of  the  people  under  the 
old  classical  regime.  Everyone  has  heard  of  his  woman 
of  Mars  la  Tour  who,  standing  by  the  roadside,  dreary 
and  forlorn,  told  how  hard  the  times  were  and  how 
heavy  the  taxes  and  dues  to  the  lords  and  seigneurs. 
He  took  her  for  sixty  or  seventy,  her  back  was  so  bent 
and  her  face  so  furrowed  and  hardened  by  labour,  but 
she  was  only  twenty-eight. 

To  what  are  we  to  attribute,  he  asks,  the  misery  that 
crushes  these  poor  people?  "To  government,"  is  his 
stern  answer.  Wherever  he  goes  through  "Sunny 
France,"  Arthur  Young  has  to  tell  of  fields  and  houses 
of  misery.  "Wastes!  wastes!  wastes!"  he  cries — "a 
country  possessing  nothing  but  privilege  and  poverty." 
He  had  hardly  written  the  words  when  the  privileges 
were  swept  away  by  the  revolution.  A  centennial  edition 
of  Young's  book  was  published  on  the  anniversary  of  that 
revolution,  in  1889,  edited  by  one  who  spent  the  summers 
of  fifteen  years  in  going  over  every  step  of  the  journey  of 
one  hundred  years  before  in  order  to  report  on  what 
difference  there  might  be  between  the  "fittest"  who 
survived  in  the  eighteenth  century  and  those  of  the 
nineteenth.  The  country  has  been  turned  into  a  garden ; 
the  slaves  of  one  hundred  years  ago  are  happy,  well-fed 
farmers  owning  themselves  and  the  fruits  of  their  work. 
Filthy  villages  have  become  splendid  cities  without  a 
beggar.  In  some  districts  so  great  is  the  change  that  the 
nineteenth  century  traveller  describes  it  as  "Utopian." 
There  is  "distribution  of  well-being  without  a  parallel 
in  any  part  of  Europe." 

Where  in  Maine  and  Anjou,  Young  found  the  peasants 


220  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

living  in  cave  dwellings  hollowed  out  of  the  rocks,  there 
are  now  farm  houses  handsome  enough  for  villas.  Where 
Young  found  the  widow,  described  by  Carlyle,  gathering 
nettles  in  the  rain  for  dinner  for  her  children,  of  which 
the  Marquis  takes  his  third  and  calls  it  "rent,"  there  is 
now  a  land  overflowing  with  milk  and  honey,  where 
"  the  poorest  eats  asparagus,  green  peas  and  strawberries 
every  day  when  in  season."  Where  the  aged  woman  of 
twenty-eight  poured  out  her  woes  to  Young,  his  successor 
of  to-day  is  entertained  by  a  rich  farmeress  who  wears  a 
fashionable  toilette  on  Sundays,  gives  her  children  the 
best  of  educations,  and  when  her  daughters  marry  has 
dowries  of  thousands  of  francs  for  them.  To  what  is  this 
startling  transformation  due?  We  answer  in  the  same 
words  that  Young  employed:  "To  government."  The 
fittest  that  survived  in  1789  were  so  different  from  the 
fittest  of  1889  because  the  environment  had  been  made 
different.  A  new  social  selection  had  been  brought  into 
operation.  There  had  begun  to  be  a  people,  and  the 
people  had  begun  to  will  and  create. 

" Scientific"  is  the  word  conceitedly  arrogated  to  them- 
selves by  the  dull  people  who  assume  that  they  know 
the  laws  of  currency,  trade,  and  the  other  departments 
of  social  economy,  and  quote  these  laws  against  every 
proposal  of  reform.  Any  scheme  for  doing  things  better 
is  dismissed  as  a  "violation  of  the  natural  laws,"  "the 
inevitable  laws."  There  is  no  surer  test  of  the  title  of 
scholars  to  be  called  cultivated,  than  whether  they  have 
mastered  the  fact  that  in  social  science  the  "laws"  that 
rule  men  are  the  laws  that  men  make.  There  are  as 
many  codes  of  "laws"  in  this  department  of  natural 
science  as  there  are  sets  of  dominant  ideas  expressed  in 
the  order  of  social  science.  No  man  is  scientific  who  does 
not  grasp  the  truth  that  the  "laws"  of  currency,  employ- 


NEW  POLITICAL   ECONOMY  221 

ment,  wealth  change  as  the  ideas  and  ideals  of  men 
change.  The  man  who  proclaims  as  "laws" — that  is,  as 
calculable  series  of  cause  and  effect — the  methods  that 
men  have  followed  and  pushed  to  one  side  as  "unscien- 
tific" those  who  insist  on  discussing  whether  these  laws 
are  "right"  is  himself  the  most  unscientific  of  investi- 
gators. He  disregards  the  most  potent  force  of  all  those 
in  his  field.  The  only  thing  certain  about  what  he  calls 
laws  is  that  they  are  certain  to  disappear,  and  that  the 
moment  they  began  to  be  called  laws  they  began  to  cease 
to  be  such.  It  is  in  the  protests,  exhortations,  prophesies 
of  the  men  he  derides  that  the  germs  of  future  institutions 
lie.  The  only  true  science  is  that  which  listens  even  in 
political  economy  to  the  whispers  of  the  poet  and  the 
reformer,  and  classifies  that  which  IS  only  as  a  bridge 
between  that  which  was  and  that  which  is  to  be. 

Within  a  comparatively  few  years  the  continent  of 
Europe  has  been  overspread  with  a  network  of  Raffeisen 
and  Schultze-Delitsch  and  other  co-operative  banks  work- 
ing among  the  poor.  There  are  thousands  of  them,  and 
their  deposits  and  loans  amount  to  thousands  of  million 
of  dollars.  They  are  the  most  successful,  the  safest  and 
best  banks  in  the  world.  Their  social  and  moral  results 
are  a  marvel. 

Under  the  magic  inspiration  of  the  chance  to  get  a 
fresh  start  in  the  world,  "  the  idle  man  becomes  indus- 
trious ;  the  spendthrift  thrifty ;  the  drunkard  reforms ;  the 
haunter  of  taverns  forsakes  the  inn ;  the  illiterate,  though 
a  grand-father,  learns  to  write-." 

Priests  confess  that  the  co-operative  bank  has  done 
more  to  evangelise  the  people  than  all  their  ministrations. 
"Paupers  struggle  off  the  parish  list  and  live  on  their 
own  labour." 

The  Government  of  Italy,  in  the  hope  to  tame  the 


222  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

disorderly  hosts  of  gypsy  squatters  in  the  wild  forest 
stretches  of  Venetia,  gave  them  land  out  of  the  the  public 
domain.  The  gypsies,  having  no  means  of  cultivating 
the  land,  turned  themselves  loose  again  on  the  world. 
Loans  of  money  were  made  to  them,  and  the  "gypsies 
settled  down  and  became  decent  and  orderly  folk,  and 
the  wild  forest  has  now  become  a  civilised  and  pro- 
gressive district."  Where  the  people's  banks  come 
in  hovels  and  mortgages  disappear,  the  usurers  have 
to  leave  the  country,  the  tavern-keepers  fail.  The 
people  become  better  men  and  better  neighbours.  Where 
there  used  to  be  grudging,  envy  and  delight  in  each 
other's  troubles,  there  is  now  fellow-feeling.  The  people 
have  learned  that  they  are  bound  together  by  a  common 
interest;  that  their  neighbour's  hurt  is  their  hurt;  their 
neighbour's  good  their  good.  The  Hungarian  diet  sent  a 
deputy,  Professor  von  Dobransky,  to  investigate  the 
work  of  these  banks.  "I  have  seen  a  new  world,"  he 
said;  a  world  of  brotherhood  and  mutual  help,  where 
everyone  is  the  protector  and  assister  of  his  neighbour. 
The  seventy-two  communistic  societies  of  the  United 
States,  as  described  by  Charles  Nordhoff  in  1875,  had 
accumulated  $12,000,000  of  property,  an  average  of 
$2,000  each  for  every  man,  woman  and  child.  In  making 
this  the  communists  had  not  had  to  work  painfully  hard ; 
they  had  had  more  comfort,  better  insurance  against  want 
and  demoralisation,  better  schools  for  their  children  and 
far  less  exposure  for  the  women,  the  aged  and  infirm 
than  their  neighbours.  Land  near  them  rose  in  price. 
They  made  work  a  pleasure.  They  were  unusually 
healthy,  and  were  found  to  be  the  most  long-lived  of  our 
population.  They  kept  out  of  debt  and  never  speculated. 
The  greater  variety  of  employment  widened  the  faculties. 
No  one  was  a  servant  of  anyone  else,  but  was  served 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  223 

by  all,  and  so  had  comfort,  safety,  brotherhood  and  inde- 
pendence. The  life  was  higher  and  better  and  pleasanter 
than  that  of  the  mechanic  and  labourer  and  farmer  of  the 
outside  world.  Their  reputation  for  the  honesty  of  their 
goods  was  worth,  Nordhoff  says,  "at  least  10  per  cent, 
over  their  competitors." 

There  was  a  spiritual  value  in  this  economic  redemp- 
tion. To  begin  at  the  bottom  of  godliness,  all  the  com- 
munists were  found  to  be  remarkable  cleanly.  Selfishness 
and  greed  were  restrained;  self-sacrifice  encouraged;  the 
happiness  that  comes  from  the  moral  nature  cultivated. 
The  communists  were  chaste  and  temperate ;  remarkable 
for  their  humanity  and  charitableness;  their  animals 
always  better  cared  for  than  is  usual  among  their  neigh- 
bours. 

Always  failures?  Only  within  these  communities  has 
there  been  seen,  in  the  wide  borders  of  the  United  States, 
a  social  life  where  hunger  and  cold,  prostitution,  intem- 
perance, poverty,  slavery,  crime,  premature  old  age  and 
unnecessary  mortality,  panic  and  industrial  terror,  have 
been  abolished.  If  they  had  done  this  only  for  a  year, 
they  would  deserve  to  be  called  the  only  successful 
"  society"  on  this  continent,  and  some  of  them  are  genera- 
tions old.  They  are  little  oases  of  people  in  our  desert 
of  persons.  All  this  has  not  been  done  by  saints  in 
heaven,  but  on  earth  by  average  men  and  women;  for, 
as  Nordhoff  says,  "all  the  successful  communes  are  com- 
posed of  what  are  commonly  called  'common  people."1 

One  of  the  fetes  at  the  coronation  of  the  czar  at  St. 
Petersburg  was  to  be  a  feast  on  the  great  plain  near  the 
palace  where  everyone  of  the  loyal  million  who  had  come 
from  all  parts  of  the  empire  was  to  be  fed  and  to  receive 
a  souvenir  of  their  new  White  Father.  Long  before 
daybreak  the  plain  was  black  with  an  eager  mass  pressing 


224  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

forward.  The  whole  multitude  got  into  irresistible 
motion  toward  the  gates  shutting  them  out  from  the 
splendours  within.  It  was  a  huge,  wild,  unmanageable 
assembly,  everyone  crazy  with  desire  and  with  fear  that 
he  might  be  too  late  or  too  far  away.  The  crowd  wrinkled 
up  into  ridges  of  broken  humanity  like  the  ice  in  a  jam 
in  the  polar  sea.  The  roll  of  the  killed  and  wounded 
was  like  that  of  a  battle.  To  snatch  a  sweetmeat  and 
a  cheap  bauble  the  people  trampled  each  other  to  death. 
But  even  this  rabble  without  leaders,  or  the  faculty  of 
leadership  in  their  poor  heads,  treading  each  other  down 
into  the  clay  from  which  they  sprang,  did  not  keep  on 
forever.  There  came  a  moment  even  for  them  to  stop 
and  turn.  When  shall  we  turn? 

Every  one  of  us  knows  from  books  and  life  countless 
cases  of  social  selection  and  the  creation  of  environment, 
like  those  recited  a  moment  ago,  of  the  power  of  man 
to  make  and  mar  himself  and  his  fellows,  to  bind  and 
loose.  How  long  are  we  to  go  on,  like  the  miserable 
peasants  at  the  coronation,  for  the  hope  of  a  toy  and  a 
goody  we  do  not  get,  grinding  each  other  into  agony 
and  extinction  on  the  very  plains  where  we  might  live 
as  a  people  in  brotherhood  and  plenty  for  all?  The  ex- 
periences, good  and  bad,  we  have  recited  do  not  prove 
that  only  the  few  can  live  together  as  friends.  They 
prove  that  the  many  cannot  live  together  any  otherwise. 

The  old  political  economy  cried:  "What  shall  I  do 
to  be  saved?"  The  new  political  economy  says :  "Save 
and  you  shall  be  saved."  Organise  into  the  life  of  the 
people.  "It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive,'' 
and  the  progress  in  wealth,  independence  and  the  higher 
life  will  be  illimitable.  When  each  one  serves  all  he 
is  served  by  all,  and  the  energies  released  from  grosser 
cares  will  mount  into  loftier  reaches  of  the  spirit. 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  225 

"The  communion  cup  for  all!"  was  the  cry  of  the 
German  peasants  who  rose  under  the  inspiration  of  Huss 
and  Wy cliff e  in  the  fifteenth  century.  "  The  communion  for 
all!"  must  always  be  the  cry  of  the  people.  We  must 
establish  ourselves  in  the  right  to  utter  to  its  fullest  every 
faculty,  and  we  can  do  so  only  by  establishing  each  other. 

The  new  political  economy  teaches  that  all  are  cut 
short  when  one  is  cut  short;  that  there  can  be  no  over- 
production or  over-population  as  long  as  there  is  under- 
consumption; and  that  the  right  of  all  to  work  must  be 
held  sacred  as  long  as  there  is  a  want  unsatisfied  or  an 
energy  unexpressed — that  is,  forever.  No  man  has  liberty 
of  conscience  who  is  dependent  on  the  will  of  another 
for  work.  There  must  be  no  mediator  between  nature 
and  man  but  the  whole  people — no  more  in  industry  than 
in  religion. 

There  are  10,000,000  unnecessary  deaths  in  Europe 
every  year.  There  are  10,000,000  unemployed  men  and 
women  in  Europe  amd  America.  We  are  still  pagans, 
and  every  one  of  these  tens  of  millions  of  men  and  women, 
dead  or  idle,  is  a  sacrifice  to  the  heathenish  gods.  Every 
one  of  these  unuttered  men  and  women  might  be  producing 
wealth  in  which  we  would  be  sharers;  they  might  be 
defenders  with  us  of  the  common  rights;  might  be  our 
brothers  and  sisters. 

This  "  production,  distribution  and  exchange  of  noble- 
ness" is  the  subject  of  the  new  political  economy,  and 
it  has  for  its  function  to  find  for  men  the  economic 
footing  which  will  enable  them  by  being  noble  to  reap 
the  nobleness  of  other  men.  The  communes  are  its 
pioneers.  They  are  the  monasteries  in  which  the  light 
of  the  new  faith  is  kept  burning  on  the  mountain  tops 
until  the  dark  age  is  over.  These  little  societies  must 
be  generalised  into  a  society  which  will,  like  them,  ex- 


226  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

tinguish  the  degrading  dependence  of  the  many  on  the 
few  for  a  chance  to  work  and  for  a  share  of  the  product. 
It  must,  like  them,  create  the  economic  equality  which 
is  the  next  step  in  the  historic  series  which  has  begun  with 
religious  and  political  equality. 

America  has  been  two  centuries  of  opportunity.  Its 
free  lands  and  open  careers  have  given  us  an  intoxicating 
taste  of  freedom  from  dependence  on  others  for  the  right 
to  be.  But  there  are  no  more  Americas  except  in  the 
virtues  we  can  create  and  exchange,  and  in  the  wealth 
which  follows  virtue — sometimes  too  fast  for  the  virtuous. 
We  must  now  get  by  our  will  what  we  have  tasted  by 
accident.  Man,  who  evolved  his  body  out  of  the  dust  in 
the  image  of  the  Good,  is  evolving  the  body  politic,  and 
is  now  about  to  take  another  step  forward  in  the  task, 
fortunately  never  ending,  of  its  creation. 

The  people  is  making  itself.  There  never  yet  has  been 
a  people;  never  yet  a  republic.  A  people,  according  to 
Browning,  is  the  rise  of  the  many  to  the  completer  life 
of  one.  This  vision  of  the  many  become  one  has  been 
held  up  before  the  many  by  all  the  bibles ;  and  the  many, 
little  by  little,  are  moulding  themselves  to  it.  Every 
new  evolution  is  an  ecstacy,  and  life  is  a  composition  of 
ecstacies.  In  the  bliss  that  follows  the  stop  of  a  raging 
ache  we  get  word  of  one  of  the  hundreds  of  Edens  in 
which  we  dwell,  unnoticed  because  habitual. 

Heaven  lies  about  us,  as  our  Virgils  and  Dantes  and 
Miltons  have  told  us,  circle  on  circle;  but  these  circles, 
as  the  poets  have  not  always  said,  rest  on  the  earth. 
We  have  in  every  response  which  we  can  educate  the 
powers  within  us  to  make  to  the  calls  from  man  and 
nature  without  a  new  possibility  of  paradise. 

Our  predecessors  have  builded  for  us  a  heaven  of 
freedom  of  opinion,  so  to-day  we  can  broach  our  theories 


NEW  POLITICAL  ECONOMY  227 

of  God  and  government  and  society  with  no  fear  of  a 
Claverhouse  and  his  dragoons  clattering  down  the  rocks 
upon  our  conventicle  in  the  glen,  or  of  an  Alva  and  his 
men  of  i>lood  to  drag  us  to  the  inquisition.  Hardly  a 
suggestion  even  of  what  Lowell  calls  the  "mosquito 
martyrdoms." 

Feudal  Europe  was  a  hell;  every  castle  a  little  hades 
of  alternate  fear  and  ferocity.  We  have  abolished  the 
gentleman  with  the  sword  by  his  side,  and  the  chivalry 
who  rode  the  people  down,  and  the  baron  with  his  right 
of  private  war ;  and  in  the  domestic  peace  which  prevails 
we  have  an  earthly  beatitude  which  only  Armenia  and 
the  frontier  between  the  Apache  and  the  Sioux  can  enable 
us  to  realise. 

All  the  political  economies,  contracts,  land  laws,  all 
the  self-interest  theories  of  the  rich  and  the  capitalist,  have 
always  said:  We  exist  for  the  people,  as  the  kings  have 
always  addressed  their  people  as  their  "children."  The 
most  strenuous  doctrinaire  of  the  right  of  the  bargainer, 
of  the  title  of  the  possessor,  does  not  fail  to  say:  We 
provide  employment,  or  This  is  for  our  skill  in  super- 
intendence, or,  This  is  our  Supply  for  your  Demand,  or, 
This  is  the  reward  of  the  Thrift,  Abstinence,  with  which 
we  save  and  use  the  capital  of  the  Community.  These 
kingly,  aristocratic,  capitalistic  pretensions  are  not 
solely  hypocrisies;  they  are  the  confessions  of  a  duty  felt 
if  not  fulfilled.  Love  is  the  stuff  of  all  our  rules  and 
forms  of  our  public  and  private  associations.  Property 
is  held  and  transferred  by  will,  deed  or  sale  only  as  the 
common  will  directs,  and  always  subject  to  the  social 
will,  as  the  superior  of  the  single  will.  This  superior 
will  taxes  its  inheritance,  sale,  income,  importation, 
regulates  it  as  by  sanitary  and  factory  and  employers' 
liability,  and  Irish  land  laws;  appropriates  it  as  by 


228  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

eminent  domain  for  the  common  use.  The  law  holds 
that  all  men  are  equal  in  rights.  The  law  has  made  real 
through  its  bankruptcy  enactment  the  saying,  "Come 
unto  me  all  ye  that  labour  and  are  heavy  laden,  and  I 
will  give  you  rest,"  which,  even  while  we  have  done  it, 
we  have  supposed  only  a  god  could  do.  Our  political 
Constitutions  have  no  foundation  except  the  general 
welfare  and  the  consent  of  the  governed,  and  give  an 
equal  vote  to  men  of  every  variety  of  strength  and 
weakness,  good  will  and  bad  will.  Down  to  our  table 
manners,  the  essence  and  foundation  of  our  social  institu- 
tions, even  of  slavery,  is  the  progressive  incarnation  of 
love.  Love  is  the  ideal,  and  the  real  is  the  progressive 
compromises  it  makes  with  its  other  half — self-interest. 
The  reconciliation  of  individual  love  and  social  love  with 
each  other,  of  individual  self-interest  and  social  self- 
interest,  of  both  kinds  of  love  with  both  kinds  of  self- 
interest — this  is  the  life  of  all  for  all.  Every  act  of  life, 
like  every  act  of  the  plants  or  the  planets,  is  a  compro- 
mise. If  we  don't  like  the  word  compromise  we  can 
say  composition.  To  go  anywhere,  to  do  anything,  we 
have  to  balance.  We  cannot  by  any  smoothness  of 
phrase  nor  cunning  of  panacea  save  ourselves  the  trouble 
of  making  a  new  decision  at  every  crisis,  and  every 
act  is  a  crisis.  The  political  economist  thinks  he  has 
made  the  social  world  simple  by  throwing  away  sympathy. 
But  he  has  only  made  it  impossible.  The  transcenden- 
talist  thinks  we  have  but  to  deny  self-interest  and  we  will 
find  in  love  the  universal  solvent.  But  the  solvent  has 
nothing  to  solve.  Self-interest,  the  competition  of  self- 
interest,  are  as  right  as  love  and  its  self -surrenders.  Love 
makes  for  the  centre,  the  people.  Self-interest  for  the 
circumstance,  the  individual.  Love  unites,  self-interest 
separates. 


NEW  POLITICAL   ECONOMY  229 

It  is  education  which  can  select  and  prepare  the  civil 
service  of  the  communisms  and  free  the  spirit  for  the 
anarchies.  Until  we  get  to  heaven  the  progress  of  com- 
munalisations  must,  if  the  balance  of  society  is  to  be  kept, 
be  accompanied  by  an  equal  popularisation  of  private 
property.  Every  one  of  the  people  must  own  something 
of  his  own.  Society  must  not  become  centripetalised. 
There  must  be  individualism  as  well  as  socialism,  home 
rule  as  well  as  national  rule.  There  must  be  independence 
as  well  as  interdependence.  Every  citizen  must  have  his 
field,  his  home,  his  separate  things,  to  be  administered  by 
himself  alone.  His  personality,  his  self-reliance,  his  sense 
of  private  power  must  be  more  than  kept  intact,  must  be 
cultivated  and  developed,  if  he  is  to  be  fit  to  meet  his 
fellows  in  the  co-operative  activities.  There  must  be  a 
corner  for  everyone,  a  retreat  where  he  may  exercise 
his  volition  instead  of  submitting  to  that  of  the  majority, 
a  solitude  where  he  ceases  to  think  as  one  of  the  com- 
monalty for  the  common  welfare  but  occupies  himself 
with  the  nearer  and  more  intimate  concerns  of  his  own 
property  and  own  personality.  We  must  be  men  as 
well  as  members.  Only  out  of  such  stout  stock,  each 
revolving  about  his  own  centre  as  well  as  revolving 
with  the  other  bodies  of  his  system,  can  we  get  the  true 
society.  Even  the  co-operative  associative  habit  of  mind 
runs  into  vices  as  distinctly  as  does  the  individualistic; 
each  can  be  kept  true  only  by  the  correction  of  the  other. 

Society  must  do,  as  every  creature  of  the  commonwealth 
of  nature  has  done  in  order  to  survive  in  its  ascent  from 
the  slime — keep  creating  itself.  Progress  means  anarchies 
as  well  as  communisms.  Under  communisms,  as  long  as 
they  are  developing  upward,  society  and  the  individual 
express  their  progress  in  a  series  of  anarchies  which  are 
the  complement  of  the  communisms  just  described. 


230  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

If  the  story  of  Abraham's  turning  from  the  sacrifice 
of  Isaac  to  the  sacrifice  of  a  ram  providentially  at  hand, 
caught  in  a  thicket  by  his  horns,  is  a  romantic  and 
highly  personified  account  of  the  social  change  by  which 
the  Israelites  gave  up  human  sacrifices,  it  adds  another 
illustration  to  many  from  the  history  of  China,  India, 
Japan  and  other  countries.  The  Lawgiver  of  the  universe, 
representing  the  new  social  will,  interferred  with  the 
command  to  Abraham,  "Lay  not  thine  hand  upon  the 
lad."  But  we  now  need  no  interference  from  the  state 
or  any  authority  to  deter  us  from  human  sacrifices — of 
that  kind.  Even  though  the  law  against  crimes  must 
remain  on  the  statute  books  for  the  restraint  of  those 
who  cannot  restrain  themselves,  millions  of  good  men 
and  women  have  reached  the  anarchic  stage  where  no 
force  of  the  state  is  needed  to  keep  them  honest,  and 
pure  and  loyal.  Civilised  society  could  thus  be  sociolog- 
ically mapped  out  as  containing  within  itself  enlarging 
areas  of  communisms  and  anarchies  —  the  material 
progress  expressing  itself  in  the  communisms ;  the  anarch- 
ies being  the  consummations  of  the  moral  growths. 
A  catalogue  of  the  anarchies  or  achievements  of  uncom- 
pelled  goodness  would  be  what  the  mathematicians  call 
"the  reciprocal,"  or  inversion  of  a  list  of  the  wickednesses 
mankind  had  grown  out  of.  In  a  catalogue  of  the  com- 
munisms we  would  find  the  industries  to  which  mankind 
had  succeeded  in  applying  the  principle  of  brotherhood. 
Projected  to  their  consummation,  these  ideals  would 
indicate  that  Heaven,  or  the  perfect  earthly  society, 
would  be  materially  all  commune ;  spiritually,  all  anarchy. 
There  could  be  neither  without  the  other;  each  exists 
only  by  virtue  of  the  other;  there  could  be  no  individual 
acts  or  social  acts  without  both.  The  only  strength  love 
has  it  gets  by  overcoming  self-interest;  the  only  right- 


231 

eousness  self-interest  has  it  learns  from  its  antagonist, 
love.  Selfishness  and  altruism,  competition  and  socialism, 
will  each  persist  as  long  as  the  other  one  of  the  pair 
persists.  Progress  is  made  up  of  their  successive  com- 
promises or  harmonisations.  These  forces  fight,  as  men 
and  nations  do,  for  peace — the  peace  of  the  family,  the 
clan,  the  nation,  the  church,  of  slavery,  serfdom.  All 
these  have  been  pacifications.  The  unresting  forces,  the 
moment  one  contest  is  decided,  begin  another.  Man  is 
forever  harmonising  liberty  in  organisations,  and  breaking 
up  organisations  to  get  liberty.  "  Ohne  Hast,  Ohne  Rast." 
The  battle  in  our  day  is  for  the  industrial  pacification,  the 
social  arrangement  which  shall  best  balance  the  existing 
ideals. 

Every  man  having  illimitable  progressivity  of  desires 
needs  all  he  wants.  This  he  can  get  only  by  drawing 
upon  all  the  resources  of  nature,  including  fellow-men; 
hence  every  man  is  indispensable  to  every  other.  Herein 
lies  the  true  political  economy  which  can  harmonise  all 
— reveal  new  resources  of  wealth. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED LOVE,  THE  RELIGION;  WORK, 

THE  WORSHIP;  HUMANITY,  THE  CONGREGATION; 
THE  GOLDEN  RULE,  THE  CREED. 

THE  politics  and  political  economy  of  our  fathers  taught 
us  that  the  way  for  the  people  to  be  safe  was  to  allow 
no  one  ruler  or  capitalist  to  become  great.  This  popular 
belief  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  opposition,  first  to  corpora- 
tions and  later  to  combinations  of  corporations,  irre- 
spective of  whether  they  do  right  or  wrong,  simply 
because  they  are  great.  A  better  science  is  growing  up, 
to  teach  that  instead  of  preventing  others  to  become 
great  the  people  need  only  to  become  greater  themselves, 
and  this  the  people  can  clearly  be  seen  doing  in  every 
part  of  the  world  and  in  every  department  of  the  common 
life.  What  we  are  witnessing  in  the  appalling  riot  of 
immorality  in  legislatures,  in  industries  and  in  public 
opinion  in  all  provinces — the  Church,  the  university,  the 
press — does  not  indicate  a  decay  but  a  great  enlargement 
of  morality  and  intelligence.  So  moral  have  the  masses 
become  that  a  great  enterprise  like  a  railroad  can  be 
planned,  financed,  completed,  operated,  receipts  and 
expenses  balanced  and  the  net  profits  of  millions  for- 
warded to  the  owners  in  the  four  quarters  of  the  globe, 
all  by  hired  men  owning  none  of  the  riches  they  create 
and  transmit.  The  very  existence  of  republican  govern- 
ment, with  all  its  abuses,  implies  an  extraordinary 
morality  among  the  people  of  all  classes.  There  is 
immorality,  tyranny,  cruelty;  but  it  is  the  immorality, 
tyranny,  cruelty  of  a  moment — of  a  moment  of  intoxica- 
tion. It  has  been  pointed  out  that  the  whole  of  the 

232 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  233 

preceding  eighteen  centuries  of  our  era  in  invention  and 
discovery,  in  the  creation  of  wealth,  in  intellectual 
advance,  have  not  equalled  the  single  century  we  are 
leaving  behind  us.  Such  a  shifting  of  population,  of 
industries,  of  opportunities  has  never  been  witnessed  as 
was  opened  to  the  European  race,  of  which  we  are  but 
the  vanguard,  by  the  outburst  of  human  activity  in  the 
exploitation  of  the  continent  of  America,  and  the  other 
still  greater  continents  of  steam,  electricity,  chemistry 
and  other  new  territory  acquired  from  nature  by  man. 

"The  settlement  of  the  Continent  of  America,"  says 
Henry  Sumner  Maine,  "is  the  greatest  achievement  in 
the  history  of  our  race" — and  the  achievement  is  not 
finished.  There  was  no  social  organism  that  could  ac- 
complish this.  It  had  to  be  done  by  the  pioneer  instead 
of  the  community.  The  capitalist  grew  into  a  corporation 
and  the  corporation  into  the  corporation  of  corporations — 
the  Trust.  These  gigantic  fortunes  appearing  everywhere 
are  not  the  creations  of  the  rich;  they  are  the  fruits  of 
these  new  values  of  man  and  nature,  and  chief  among 
the  values  are  the  moral  qualities  which  two  thousand 
years  of  Christianity  and  Democracy  have  produced. 
These  great  millionaires  are  not  creating  wealth  but 
consolidating  wealth  created  by  the  people,  including 
themselves.  These  strong  men,  escaping  from  the  old 
social  forms  to  create  another,  believe  that  their  strength 
and  their  work  give  them  the  right  to  be  a  special  Provi- 
dence, with  a  special  morality  of  their  own.  They  are 
obeying  their  law,  which  is  to  push  their  power  to  the 
uttermost.  Their  immoralities  and  tyrannies  are  a 
minor  fact.  The  great  fact  is  that  the  world  is  being 
unified,  and  that  new  wealths  of  men  and  nature  are  dis- 
covering themselves  every  day.  These  men  are  unifying 
the  world  through  brutality.  Punish  the  brutality  but 


234  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

accept  the  unity — and  better  it.  Even  the  briber,  the 
corrupter,  the  exploiter,  the  assassin  of  competition  and 
competitors  are  the  individual  and  individualism  gone  to 
seed.  The  great  fact  is  not  the  exploitation  of  wealth, 
even  though  criminal ;  the  great  fact  is  the  wealth  which 
invites  exploitation  and  which  reveals  a  vast  access  of 
new  moral  and  intellectual  and  material  force.  The 
Roman  Empire  built  the  roads  on  which  Christianity 
afterward  traveled  to  destroy  the  Roman  and  create 
a  greater  empire.  We  are  passing  out  of  the  "Wonderful 
Century"  of  material  progress  into  a  wonderful  century 
of  a  higher  and  finer  growth  built  on  this  material  pro- 
gress. 

In  every  part  of  the  world  we  can  see  the  people  be- 
ginning to  follow  the  pioneers,  the  capitalists,  with  a 
higher  form  of  wealth.  Having  been  co-operated  with 
passively  by  the  capitalists,  they  are  now  beginning  to  co- 
operate actively  of  and  by  themselves.  Having  been 
organised  by  the  property  and  franchise  and  privilege 
seekers,  and  having  been  paid  money  to  vote  against 
themselves,  they  are  now  beginning  to  organise  them- 
selves, to  realise  in  a  legitimate  way  the  money  value 
of  their  votes.  They  are  doing  this  by  politics,  municipal 
and  national,  in  a  dozen  countries,  and  by  co-operation  the 
world  over  in  all  industries.  English  co-operation  in 
half  a  century  has  enrolled  one-sixth  of  the  population  of 
Great  Britain.  Some  towns  are  almost  wholly  co- 
operative and  able  to  vote  themselves  into  a  local  co- 
operative commonwealth  whenever  their  people  decide 
that  the  day  has  come  for  co-operative  politics.  There 
are  towns  where  the  principal  stores,  factories,  banks, 
bakeries,  laundries,  slaughtering  establishments,  building 
companies,  and  in  fact  most  of  the  economic  framework 
of  the  life  of  the  people,  is  in  co-operative  hands.  If  the 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  235 

old  order  of  capitalism  should  fall  away,  there  would  be 
discovered  standing  within  it  this  new  order  ready  to  take 
its  place.  These  workingmen  have  made  themselves 
their  own  employers,  and  there  are  hundreds  of  establish- 
ments making  millions  of  dollars  worth  of  goods  in  which 
the  workingmen  are  not  only  wage  earners  but  share- 
holders, sharing  in  profit  and  management.  These  men 
have  had  the  practical  success  and  the  actual  experience 
which  would  qualify  them  to  officer  and  administer  a  Co- 
operative Commonwealth,  if  by  some  lucky  accident  it 
should  happen  to  come  in  England  to-morrow.  This 
co-operation  is  constantly  spreading.  What  co-operation 
is  doing  for  Ireland  is  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  age. 
Co-operation  has  increased  tenfold  in  Belgium  in  the  last 
generation,  and  almost  as  rapidly  over  the  rest  of  the 
continent.  Italy  is  interpenetrated  with  co-operative 
societies  of  all  kinds,  in  the  country  as  well  as  in  the 
cities.  Europe  is  overspread  with  co-operative  banks 
whose  capital  is  in  large  part  only  the  moral  qualities  of 
the  people,  and  the  poorest  people  at  that,  who  are 
borrowing  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars  on  their  mutual 
pledge  to  stand  by  each  other.  In  the  United  States 
there  are  found  among  the  workingmen  mutual  insurance 
companies  and  building  societies,  and  in  the  West  are 
farmers'  buying  and  selling  and  agricultural  and  creamery 
co-operations. 

The  slow  and  steady  awakening  of  the  people  to  the 
money  value  to  themselves  of  their  own  votes  in  municipal 
matters  here  and  abroad  is  a  political  initiative  of  the 
commonwealth.  This  movement  grows  logically,  as 
great  social  movements  always  do,  and  proceeds  first 
to  give  us  pure  government  in  city  and  nation.  This  is 
the  first  indispensable  accompaniment,  if  not  preliminary, 
to  the  use  of  the  government  as  an  agency  of  such  func- 


236  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

tions  as  light,  heat  and  transportation.  Every  step 
toward  pure  government  is  inevitably  resisted  by  the 
monopolists,  for  it  is  a  step  toward  preparing  the  govern- 
ment to  displace  them. 

The  same  logic  of  the  democracy  which  makes  purer 
government  the  beginning  of  municipal  commonwealth 
makes  municipal  commonwealth  the  beginning  of  national 
commonwealth.  The  common  sense  of  the  American 
people  is  evidently  going  to  learn  the  lesson  of  national 
ownership  through  municipal  ownership.  The  national 
political  renaissance  we  all  hope  for  is  clearly  to  be  seen 
forming  in  the  renaissance,  the  country  through,  of  a 
civic  consciousness — and  a  civic  conscience  which  a 
study  of  the  election  returns  in  New  York,  San  Francisco, 
Philadelphia  and  other  cities  makes  plain.  America  is 
a  very  great  country,  and  large  bodies  begin  to  move 
slowly ;  but  though  slow  to  rise,  the  Americans  are  quick 
to  act  once  they  have  risen,  and  the  final  velocities  of 
this  movement  in  America  will  more  than  make  up  for 
the  initial  deliberateness,  as  was  the  case  with  the  slavery 
question. 

In  Switzerland  we  can  see  the  development  of  a  people 
whose  social  march  has  not  been  interfered  with  by  the 
"Industrial  Revolution,"  as  Toynbee  calls  it.  The 
Swiss  have  not  been  whirled  into  cities  and  trusts  and  into 
great  contrasts  of  wealth  and  poverty.  In  New  Zealand, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  can  see  the  reaction  of  a  people 
whose  progress  was  thus  interfered  with,  and  which  had 
to  rise  in  political  revolution  to  break  up  the  grip  of 
monopoly  and  to  redress  the  social  balance  between  wealth 
and  democracy.  For  five  hundred  years  the  flag  of 
democracy  and  human  liberty  has  been  kept  floating  over 
the  Alps  by  a  people  whose  social  and  political  forms 
remain  in  some  ways  almost  primitive.  Progressing 


CHURCH  OF  THE   DEED  237 

along  the  lines  of  a  normal  march  at  the  steady,  old- 
fashioned  pace  of  their  forefathers,  these  simple  people, 
by  the  use  of  democratic  powers,  by  cashing  in  political 
institutions  the  money  value  of  their  own  votes,  have 
created  forms  of  social  wealth  which  are  not  to  be  paralleled 
elsewhere.  Cities  like  Zurich  and  Basle  have  met  the 
exactions  of  the  Coffin  Trust  and  of  extravagance  in 
funerals  by  making  the  whole  business  of  the  interment 
of  the  dead  a  function  of  the  municipality.  The  political 
party  which  accomplished  this  reform  had  for  one  of  its 
planks  that  every  man  had  the  right  to  be  born,  to  be 
married  and  to  be  buried  free — which  was  their  version 
of  the  right  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
The  city  provides  the  coffin,  carriage,  hearse,  grave, 
tombstone — everything  except  the  epitaph  and  the  ser- 
mon— perhaps  because  in  Switzerland  there  is  no  extrav- 
agance in  these.  The  richest  manufacturer  and  his 
poorest  factory  girl  go  to  the  grave  in  the  same  hearse,  and 
can  go  in  no  other. 

In  Switzerland,  as  in  some  other  countries,  the  great 
banks  found  the  needs  of  the  peasants,  artisans  and 
smaller  business  men  beneath  their  notice.  They  pre- 
ferred to  use  their  funds  for  the  "high  finance"  of  the 
stock  exchange  and  the  railroad  and  the  real-estate 
speculator.  The  democracy  of  Switzerland  by  politics, 
that  is  by  discussions,  elections  and  laws,  have  estab- 
lished state  banks  in  a  number  of  cantons.  They  found 
the  capital  for  these  banks  in  the  cantonal  treasuries, 
which  had  been  filled  by  the  mediaeval  oppressions  of 
the  country  folks  by  the  burghers,  and  by  the  reformation 
which  squeezed  out  of  the  monasteries  the  money  they 
had  previously  squeezed  out  of  the  people.  These 
cantonal  treasuries  were  in  investments  earning  money 
to  relieve  the  large  taxpayers  of  the  cost  of  government. 


238  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

The  people  voted  to  use  the  money  to  give  themselves 
banking  facilities.  These  cantonal  banks  will  loan 
sums  as  small  as  two  or  four  dollars.  The  cantonal 
bank  of  Schaffhausen  by  law  must  give  to  artisans  or  to 
mechanics  or  farmers  who  want  to  borrow — to  buy 
tools  or  a  piece  of  land  or  a  cow,  or  to  take  a  little  contract 
— the  preference  over  any  large  borrowers.  The  cantonal 
bank  of  Zurich  is  by  law  forbidden  to  be  run  for  profit; 
it  must  charge  only  enough  to  pay  its  expenses,  and 
as  profits  accrue  the  rate  of  interest  must  be  cut  down. 

A  co-operative  bank  at  Bagolino,  in  the  mountains  of 
Italy,|  is  accumulating  a  reserve,  so  that  by  and  by  it 
will  be  able  to  loan  without  interest.  Here  surely 
wealth  is  becoming  commonwealth.  The  railroads  of 
Switzerland,  privately  owned,  were  the  cause  of  specula- 
tion on  the  Bourse.  Their  charges  and  management 
were  unpopular;  they  had  troubles  with  their  men  which 
led  to  strikes,  causing  the  public  much  inconvenience 
and  irritation.  They  were  largely  owned  in  Paris, 
Berlin  and  Frankfort,  and  the  Swiss  thought  that  in 
case  of  war  foreign  ownership  of  their  highways  would 
be  a  great  danger;  and  they  thought,  too,  that  such 
necessities  of  life  as  highways  should  not  be  operated 
for  private  profit  but  for  the  good  of  the  whole  people. 
After  many  years  of  discussion,  and  several  elections, 
they  have  bought  these  railroads  back  from  the  private 
owners.  The  Swiss  people  not  only  agitate  and  elect, 
as  other  democracies  do,  they  also  legislate,  pass  laws  of 
their  own  and  reject  laws  of  the  legislature  as  they  will. 
Other  countries  have  public  ownership  of  the  railroads, 
but  none  of  them,  not  even  the  Australasian,  got  them 
in  this  way  by  the  intended  conscious  use  of  their  demo- 
cratic powers  in  direct  legislation  by  the  voters. 

The  distillers'  ring  manipulated  downward  the  price 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  239 

of  the  produce  it  bought  from  the  farmers  and  manipu- 
lated upward  the  price  of  the  spirits  it  sold  to  the  people. 
To  keep  their  spirits  up  in  another  sense,  the  people  met 
this  ring  by  making  a  state  monopoly  of  the  sale  of 
alcohol. 

In  the  case  of  some  of  these  Swiss  democratic  co- 
operations, where  the  political  power  is  used  as  a  money 
maker  for  the  community,  the  origin  is  found  far  back 
in  private  co-operations  among  the  people  in  early 
times.  Thus  the  cantonal  insurance  of  cattle  and 
against  fires,  now  a  public  function,  dates  back  almost 
centuries  to  the  voluntary  unions  among  the  people 
to  protect  themselves.  The  private  co-operations  have 
ended  in  public  co-operations. 

The  story  of  the  transfer  of  large  areas  of  private 
enterprise  by  the  New  Zealand  democracy  from  the 
empire  of  the  exploiter  to  that  of  the  public  servant  is  so 
long,  so  important,  that  it  is  impossible  to  do  more 
than  hint  at  it.  The  New  Zealanders  have  carried  out 
their  policy  of  breaking  up  great  estates  in  the  land  by 
purchase,  condemnation  and  taxation  so  well  that  land 
speculation  in  New  Zealand  is  dying,  and  no  one  now 
dreams  of  founding  or  attempting  to  found  a  landed 
estate,  which,  until  the  people  themselves  interfered, 
was  becoming  the  fashion  in  New  Zealand  as  in  England. 

There  is  a  coal  trust  in  New  Zealand,  and  in  fact  it 
covers  the  whole  of  Australia.  It  does  what  all  coal 
trusts  do.  Probably  the  most  notable  thing  done  by  any 
legislature  in  the  world,  or  by  any  legislature  in  the  past 
ten  years  except  in  New  Zealand,  where  they  have  been 
doing  nothing  but  notable  things  for  ten  years,  was  the 
step  taken  by  the  New  Zealand  Legislature  with  regard 
to  this  coal  trust.  The  government  was  granted  a 
large  sum  of  money  and  given  all  the  needed  authority 


24o  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

to  buy  and  operate  coal  mines  and  coal  stores.  It  will 
first  supply  its  own  needs  for  its  railways  and  public 
works  and  buildings;  it  will  then  sell  to  the  public. 
Similar  legislation  to  deal  with  the  flour  trust  and  other 
trusts  is  under  discussion.  New  Zealand  owns  a  large 
interest  in  the  principal  bank  of  the  colony,  and  Premier 
Seddon  and  his  most  influential  supporters  do  not  hesitate 
to  advocate  on  every  suitable  occasion  the  establishment 
of  a  State  Bank  which  shall  enable  the  people  to  ad- 
minister for  their  benefit  the  credit  which  comes  from  the 
people.  The  compulsory  arbitration  of  strikes  and 
lockouts,  which  has  spread  from  New  Zealand  to  New 
South  Wales  and  West  Australia,  and  is  destined  to 
spread  all  over  Australia  and  from  Australia  all  over 
the  civilised  world — as  the  Australian  ballot  and  Torrens 
Land  System  are  spreading — has  an  even. deeper  signifi- 
cance than  its  determination  that  the  barons  of  labour 
and  the  barons  of  capital  shall  no  longer  be  allowed  to 
settle  their  differences  in  the  style  of  the  private  wars 
of  mediaeval  feudalism.  This  deeper  meaning  is  that  it 
is  a  conscious  and  intentional  interference  by  the  people 
to  make  more  equal  than  otherwise  possible  the  division 
between  the  workingmen  and  the  capitalists  of  the 
profits  of  their  joint  toil.  The  Colony  of  Victoria  has 
adopted  instead  of  the  compulsory  arbitration  law,  a 
Minimum  Wage  Law  (an  Anti-Sweating  Law)  which 
has  the  same  commonwealth  motive — the  preventing  an 
employer  from  taking  that  full  advantage  of  his  position 
which  he  might,  and  to  ensure  the  workers  a  better  share 
of  the  wealth  they  create  than  they  could  get  by  their 
individual  economic  prowess. 

If  an  employer  in  New  Zealand  kills  or  injures  an 
employee,  he  has  to  pay  a  fine  into  the  State  Treasury  as 
well  as  to  make  compensation  to  the  victim  or  his  family. 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  241 

The  wealth  of  the  careless  or  inhuman  employer  is  trans- 
muted into  the  commonwealth  by  a  double  contribution 
to  the  wage  fund  and  the  exchequer  of  the  nation. 

In  many  ways  in  the  provinces  of  land,  labour,  money, 
business,  transportation,  in  the  problems  of  the  slums, 
millionairism,  pauperism,  the  unemployed,  usury,  the 
housing  of  the  people,  the  trusts,  banks,  tramps,  specula- 
tion, congestion  of  cities,  the  depopulation  of  the  country, 
New  Zealand  and  Australia  have  used  the  political  power 
of  all  the  individuals  to  lessen  the  economic  power  of  a 
few  of  the  individuals,  in  order  to  enlarge  the  wealth  of 
all. 

There  are  eighteen  classes  of  millionaires  known  to  us 
in  the  United  States  who  are  rendered  hereafter  impossible 
in  New  Zealand.  The  wealth  that  here  would  be  that  of 
the  millionaires  in  railroads,  sleeping  cars,  telegraphs, 
telephones,  life  insurance,  coal  mining,  express  companies, 
land  speculation  and  other  private  wealth  is  there  become, 
or  becoming,  commonwealth.  I  count  among  these 
eighteen  classes  of  millionaires  as  only  one  class  the  rebate 
millionaires — those  created  by  receiving  special  secret 
rates  on  the  railroads,  enabling  them  to  drive  their 
competitors  out  of  business.  If  the  rebate  were  abolished 
in  America — which  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission 
tells  us  every  year  has  not  been  done — it  would  abolish  at 
least  twice  eighteen  classes  of  millionaires.  For  more 
than  half  of  our  great  fortunes  have  had  their  source  in 
this  secret  spring.' 

The  Australasians  have  gone  beyond  negative  inter- 
ference with  wealth  into  the  field  of  the  positive  creation 
of  commonwealth  by  the  use  of  common  resources. 
They  give  a  bonus  to  new  industries.  They  make  patents, 
as  in  mining,  open  to  all  at  cost.  They  provide  pro- 
ducers with  land  and  with  money,  and  give  railroad 


242  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

transportation  to  persons  and  products  at  cost,  sometimes 
free.  They  carry  lime  free  to  the  farmer  and  children  free 
to  school.  They  do  all  that  other  nations  do  in  the  way 
of  expert  instruction,  they  teach  the  people  how  to  form 
co-operative  societies.  They  go  into  active  partnership 
with  the  farmers,  advancing  part  of  the  cost  of  the 
creameries,  grading  export  produce  free,  giving  free 
storage,  and  in  the  case  of  South  Australia  even  estab- 
lishing at  the  common  cost  a  state  store  in  London  for 
the  sale  of  export  products.  They  even  slaughter 
animals  and  poultry  destined  for  the  foreign  market. 
They  share  the  cost  of  finding  and  opening  mines,  and 
dig  wells  as  we  would  make  roads.  They  help  sugar 
planters  to  build  sugar  mills,  and  directly  interfere 
between  the  transportation  monopolies  and  the  public  to 
insure  shippers  lower  rates.  In  all  these  and  other  ways 
the  democracy  of  Australia  are  pooling  their  powers  as 
citizens  to  increase  the  wealth  of  the  citizens  and  the 
state.  Their  use  of  public  powers  is  a  companion  picture 
of  the  use  of  private  powers  by  the  co-operators  of 
Europe  and  America.  These  two  hemispheres,  the 
public  and  private  co-operation,  make  up  the  sphere  of  the 
commonwealth.  And  this  commonwealth,  private  in  the 
case  of  co-operation,  and  public  in  the  case  of  the  demo- 
cratic industries  like  those  of  New  Zealand  and  Switzer- 
land and  Australia,  and  some,  not  all,  of  the  municipalisa- 
tions  and  nationalisations  elsewhere,  is  evolving  itself  so 
as  to  suggest  very  forcibly  to  the  scientific  observer  the 
interesting  possibility  that  the  commonwealth,  as  it 
has  higher,  wider  and  more  ideal  motives  than  the  private 
wealth,  has  also  a  higher  economic  value — that  common- 
wealth can  make  more  money  and  keep  it  better  than 
private  wealth.  There  are  phenomena  in  the  field  to 
indicate  that  the  co-operator  and  democracy  are  not 


CHURCH   OF  THE   DEED  243 

poorer  but  better  business  men;  that  there  is  a  better 
political  economy  than  the  political  economy  of  individual 
self-interest,  and  that  is  the  political  economy  and  self- 
interest  of  all  the  individuals ;  that  the  business  man,  the 
capitalist,  was  good  enough  as  a  pioneer  and  as  a  scout 
for  the  people,  but  he  cannot  produce  wealth  fast  enough 
nor  well  enough  to  be  a  permanent  figure  in  any  part  of 
the  business  world  where  the  co-operator  or  democracy 
can  enter  in. 

This  is  a  complete  reversal  of  the  ideas  on  which 
we  have  been  bred.  Let  us  look  at  some  of  the  facts. 
The  workingman  without  capital  or  business  experience 
enters  the  fields  of  manufacture  and  commerce,  and,  in 
the  face  of  the  most  determined  competition  of  the 
established  and  successful  business  men  in  England, 
France,  Belgium,  Italy  and  all  over  Europe,  builds  up  the 
really  magical  palaces  of  industry  we  find  all  through 
Co-operation  Land,  as  in  Manchester,  Glasgow,  Turin, 
Milan  and  Brussels.  The  business  man,  as  in  Glasgow, 
Brussels  and  scores  of  other  cities,  organizes  to  make  war 
on  the  alarmingly  prosperous  co-operator,  and  the  co- 
operators  prosper  only  the  more  and  find  this  attack 
so  stimulating  that  they  try  to  beguile  the  private  traders 
into  further  hostilities.  Every  device  of  capitalism, 
every  device  of  business  cunning,  all  the  tricks  of  compe- 
tition have  been  used  to  destroy  this  new  school  of 
wealth  in  vain.  These  workingmen  survive  and  conquer. 
Commonwealth  has  a  vitality  wealth  has  not  and  cannot 
get ;  for  it  has  not  and  cannot  get  the  economical,  spiritual, 
intellectual  secret  of  that  vitality — the  vitality  of  the 
self-interest  of  the  many  as  against  the  self-interest  of 
only  the  few. 

The  only  credit  banking  where  there  is  no  panic  nor 
bankruptcy  nor  defalcation  is  in  the  people's  banks  of 


244  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL   CREATOR 

Germany,  Switzerland,  Italy,  France  and  Ireland.  There 
are  practically  no  losses  there.  Their  transactions 
amount  to  hundreds  of  millions  of  dollars,  with  practically 
not  a  cent  of  loss,  although  a  very  large  proportion  of  their 
loans  are  made  "on  honour,"  because  the  borrowers 
are  too  poor  to  give  any  other  security ;  but  that  proves 
the  best.  When  the  People's  Banks  come  the  usurers  go 
out.  When  the  New  Zealand  Government  divides 
among  the  people  land  taken  from  the  great  landlords, 
the  produce  of  the  land  in  meat,  wheat  and  other  products 
increases  fourteen  times,  to  say  nothing  of  the  greater 
wealth  created  in  the  life  of  the  people. 

New  Zealand  finds  profitable  work  for  men  whom 
private  enterprise  leaves  idle,  and  especially  makes 
producers  of  wealth  out  of  the  old  men  and  the  soft  and 
incompetent  men  whom  the  capitalist  in  his  busiest 
days  throws  into  the  waste  heap  of  the  labour  market. 
In  New  Zealand  the  well-settled  policy  of  the  government 
ownership  of  railroads  opposed  to  the  policy  of  Germany 
is  that  the  roads  are  not  to  be  run  to  make  money  but 
to  serve  the  people.  As  rapidly  as  the  profits  increase 
above  the  amount  necessary  to  pay  the  interest  on  the 
money  borrowed  to  build  them,  rates  are  reduced.  The 
political  economy  of  democracy  uses  these  roads  to  dis- 
tribute the  unemployed  labour  at  cost  to  the  places  where 
the  work  is  to  be  found,  instead  of  leaving  it  in  the 
centres  to  depress  the  rate  of  wages  and  standard  of  life 
of  all  other  workingmen  while  dying  its  own  slow  death. 
If  the  manufacturer  does  not  get  his  labour  so  cheap,  the 
loss  of  his  wealth  is  more  than  balanced  by  the  gain  to 
the  commonwealth  in  the  lives  and  labours  of  these 
rescued  citizens. 

When  one  contemplates  the  wrecks  of  panics  and 
militant  competition,  the  unemployed,  the  pauperised, 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  245 

the  idle  land,  the  shut-down  machinery,  the  concentrated 
wealth,  the  luxury,  the  answer  must  be  that  Government 
with  all  its  blunders  and  crimes  does  not  do  so  badly  as 
that.  Business  in  the  United  States  every  ten  years  kills 
and  cripples  more  people  than  our  government  did  with 
its  Civil  War.  This  is  a  great  understatement.  The 
roll  of  the  dead  and  wounded  of  one  business  alone,  the 
railroads,  is  as  great  every  ten  years  as  that  of  the  Civil 
War. 

Where  the  capitalist  is  the  administrator  the  world  of 
industry  is  ravaged  by  labour  wars  whose  cost,  as  Labour 
Commisioner  Wright  tells  us,  is  hundreds  of  millions  of 
dollars,  and  there  is  beside  the  bigger  butchers'  bill,  as 
Lord  Kitchener  would  say,  in  the  lives  which  have  gone 
out  through  starvation  and  despair.  The  only  region 
where  this  fratricidal  extermination  of  lives  and  values 
does  not  occur  is  in  Co-operation  Land,  where  there  are 
very  few  labour  disputes,  and  in  the  democratic  territory 
of  arbitration,  where  there  are  none. 

New  Zealand  displaces  the  sweating  contractor  and 
constructs  its  public  works  by  the  direct  employment  of 
labour,  with  no  middlemen,  and  the  returns  show  that 
the  work  is  better  and  more  cheaply  done  than  under  the 
old  system;  and  the  same  results  are  reported  from 
Australia,  where  a  similar  system  has  been  adopted. 
One  of  the  most  important  railroads  of  New  Zealand  runs 
beside  and  in  competition  with  a  private  road  with 
abundance  of  capital  and  expert  management,  and  the 
public  opinion  of  New  Zealand  is  practically  unanimous 
in  favour  of  the  Government  purchase  and  operation  of 
this  private  road. 

The  co-operators  of  Glasgow  entered  the  most  de- 
pressed district  of  labour,  that  of  the  "  Song  of  the  Shirt," 
where  private  enterprise  says  it  must  sweat  to  live.  They 


246  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

put  the  women  "  with  fingers  weary  and  worn"  into  work- 
rooms lighted  and  made  healthy  with  all  the  modern  im- 
provements, and  put  the  wages  up  to  the  true  Union  rate 
and  competed  out  private  employers. 

Although  any  body  of  men  in  Switzerland  have  the 
right  to  propose  to  the  voters  a  change  in  the  laws,  and 
the  Government  must  make  the  change  when  voted  by 
the  people,  no  one  in  Switzerland  has  ever  dreamed  of 
calling,  by  the  initiative,  for  a  vote  to  take  the  telegraph 
and  telephone  systems  of  Switzerland  out  of  the  hands 
of  the  Government  and  put  them  into  the  hands  of  private 
enterprise.  Government  is  more  responsive  to  public 
opinion  and  preferences  than  the  capitalist,  and  has 
greater  resources  out  of  which  to  make  improvements, 
for  it  has  no  dividends  to  pay  and  can  do  business  at  cost. 

The  gifts  of  government  bonds  to  railroad  corporations 
in  the  United  States  take  the  form  in  New  Zealand,  South 
Australia  and  other  countries  of  grants  of  money  to  any 
producer  who  can  produce.  As  a  better  government  has 
come  up  from  the  people  than  came  down  from  the  kings, 
so  a  better  industry  appears  to  be  coming  up  from  the 
people  than  came  down  from  the  capitalists.  In  truth, 
here  as  in  government,  this  industry  of  the  people  is  the 
logical  proper  sequence  of  the  other — first  wealth,  then 
commonwealth ;  first  pioneer,  then  community ;  first  the 
capitalist,  then  the  people.  All  this  is  not  accidental. 
Commonwealth  is  the  true  wealth  and  will,  district  by 
district,  supplant  private  wealth,  because  it  has  its  roots 
deeper  in  the  springs  of  permanent  human  success. 
That  wealth  which  is  operated  by  the  intelligence  of  all, 
that  is,  democracy  or  co-operation,  must  have  more  intelli- 
gence than  the  wealth  with  only  the  intelligence  of  the 
capitalist  or  the  corporation.  Where  industry  brings  its 
fruits  to  all  it  must  have  a  higher  working  power  in  the 


CHURCH  OF  THE   DEED  247 

zeal  and  happiness  of  all.  If  industry  can  be  expedited, 
cheapened,  bettered,  by  removal  from  the  individualism 
of  the  owner  to  the  larger  efficiency  of  the  corporation,  as 
we  are  assured,  why  not  still  more  expedited,  cheapened 
and  bettered  by  removal  still  further  to  the  largest 
corporation  of  all — the  whole  people. 

What  is  fascinating  and  triumphant  about  these 
facts  is  that  they  prove  that  the  moral,  the  ideal,  has  a 
money  value,  and  they  intimate  that  it  is  likely  to  de- 
velop a  higher  money  value  than  the  non-moral  or  im- 
moral. 

The  structure  of  co-operative  values  in  Kettering,  one 
of  the  towns  where  the  co-operators  are  in  a  majority  of 
the  whole  population,  and  where  they  own  houses,  banks, 
stores,  factories  and  many  other  kinds  of  property,  to  the 
amount  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  pounds  sterling,  rests 
principally  on  the  ideal  devotion  of  a  few  men  in  the  last 
generation  to  the  creed  of  brotherhood  in  industry  and 
democracy  in  property.  Chief  among  them  was  an  old 
Chartist  who,  after  a  hard  day's  work  in  the  routine  of 
his  own  livelihood,  would  labour  until  midnight  or  later 
on  the  affairs  of  the  Co-operative  Society.  He  received 
no  compensation.  His  motive,  as  he  often  expressed  it, 
was  to  leave  the  world  a  little  better  than  he  found  it; 
and  there  were  thousands  of  such  men  in  the  co-operative 
movement  of  England,  Ireland  and  the  Continent. 
Anseele,  with  ability  to  organise  anything  from  an  army 
to  a  trust,  organised  the  co-operators  and  trade  unions 
and  reformers  of  Ghent,  building  up  a  golden  net  of 
industries  from  the  studio  to  the  political  party — for 
six  dollars  a  week.  Buffoli,  the  captain  of  co-operation 
ni  Milan,  earns  his  living  by  working  for  a  railroad  and 
builds  up  the  co-operative  enterprises  of  Milan  after 
hours.  Only  the  ideal  can  hire  these  men  at  these  prices, 


248  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

and  money  alone  at  any  price  could  not  get  out  of  them 
the  work  the  ideal  does.  A  vision  of  commonwealth,  of 
brotherhood,  of  love,  realised  in  a  world  of  property, 
capital,  work,  business,  has  seized  the  souls  of  these  men, 
as  in  the  first  years  of  our  era  the  vision  of  a  heaven  and  a 
Saviour  beyond  the  grave,  possessed  the  apostles  and 
disciples.  It  is  the  same  vision,  only  it  has  moved  its 
quarters  to  this  side — the  living  side — of  the  grave  and 
offers  its  heaven  to  the  people  now.  It  is  still  a  religious 
enthusiasm,  but  a  religious  enthusiasm  come  to  keep 
store  and  run  primaries  and  manage  legislatures.  It 
incarnates  itself  not  in  one  workingman  but  in  multitudes 
of  workingmen.  It  is  the  political  economy  of  salvation, 
and  would  be,  if  anything  could  be,  the  salvation  of 
political  economy. 

In  England  alone  the  balance  of  the  division  of  property 
between  the  working  people  and  their  employers  and 
purveyors  has  been  redressed  to  the  extent  of  a  diversion 
of  $35,000,000  a  year  to  the  workingmen  as  co-operative 
profits,  which  would  otherwise  have  gone  into  the  pockets 
of  the  merchants  and  manufacturers.  In  the  last  half 
century  no  less,  probably,  than  a  thousand  millions  of 
dollars  have  been  thus  saved  to  the  people.  The  co- 
operative movement  is  creating  a  state  within  a  state,  a 
commonwealth  within  a  world  of  wealth.  In  its  banks 
alone  it  has  administered  hundreds  of  millions  of  credit 
with  a  success  which  it  would  never  have  been  believed 
that  the  common  people  could  have  achieved  in  the  most 
difficult  province  in  the  business  world,  the  province  of 
credit. 

All  this  redistribution  of  wealth,  this  new  direction 
given  to  economic  forces  with  vast  and  visible  results,  as 
chronicled  by  trustworthy  observers  in  the  decrease  of 
drunkenness  and  immorality,  gains  in  character,  thrift, 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  249 

hope,  intelligence,  is  the  incarnation  in  an  economic 
realisation  of  the  inspired  and  prophetic  love  for  humanity 
which  burned  so  pure  a  flame  in  Robert  Owen  and  in  the 
Christian  Socialists  like  Kingsley,  Thomas  Hughes, 
Ludlow,  Maurice,  and  in  the  humble  but  immortal 
pioneers,  the  weavers  of  Rochdale.  Spurred  to  their  enter- 
prise by  bitter  poverty,  these  sublime  men  put  on  their 
first  programme,  in  their  little  back  room  used  for  a  shop 
in  Toad  Lane,  that  their  purpose  was  to  help  their  fellow- 
workers  form  other  societies,  to  found  industrial  cities, 
and  to  reform  government  and  education.  Their  capital 
of  brotherhood,  plus  a  few  pence,  has  grown  into  a 
business  of  $350,000,000  a  year — the  greatest  economic 
marvel  of  the  nineteenth  century,  far  more  remarkable 
than  the  trusts  and  gigantic  aggregations  of  the  ordinary 
commerce.  The  latter  has  only  grown  higher  powers 
of  an  old  institution,  but  in  co-operation  there  is  some- 
thing new  in  motive  and  something  new  in  results.  The 
co-operators  are  only  men,  and  their  movement  to-day 
shows  the  plain  signs  of  that  loss  in  intensity  which 
always  comes  with  extension.  But  no  one  can  go  among 
them,  read  their  literature,  hear  them  speak  in  their 
meetings,  see  the  sacrifices  that  they  make  in  money 
and  energy  in  their  devotion  to  their  propaganda  by 
journals,  lectures,  personal  effort,  and  not  be  stirred 
both  as  an  idealist  and  an  economist.  "  It  is  a  real  piece  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  actually  arrived,"  said  an  Oxford 
visitor,  after  seeing  the  co-operative  work  at  Kettering. 
On  the  front  of  handsome  buildings  in  England,  put  up, 
owned  and  operated  by  co-operative  men  and  women,  one 
sees  carved  in  stone  the  motor  words  of  the  movement — 
"The  Helping  Hand"— "Unity"— "Equality"— "All  for 
each  and  each  for  all."  And  these  fine  sentiments  of 
brotherhood  are  backed  up  by  advances  in  cash,  not  as 


250  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

charity,  but  on  a  strictly  business  basis  and  with  what  is 
better  than  money — practical  assistance  in  the  work  of 
organisation.  As  a  result,  to-day  in  that  town  a  hundred 
women  are  sitting  prosperously  at  work,  owners  in  their 
own  factory,  who  until  that  "  helping  hand  "  was  stretched 
out  were  wage  servants  of  the  most  depressed  sort. 

These  government  railroads  and  public  works  built  by 
the  unemployed,  these  cantonal  banks,  these  co-operative 
mills,  stores,  creameries,  look  as  prosaic  as  any  other 
property;  but  scan  them  closely  and  you  will  see  that 
their  framework  is  solid  with  the  principles  of  brother- 
hood and  their  covering  splendid  with  the  threads  of  a  new 
cloth  of  gold. 

Mankind  is  adding  a  new  blush  to  its  equipment  of 
blushes — the  blushes  of  chastity,  of  shame  for  the 
traitor  and  the  cruel.  Men  are  beginning  to  feel  as 
much  shame  when  they  see  a  strong  man  do  violence  to 
his  neighbour  in  the  market  as  when  they  see  such  outrage 
in  the  street.  They  are  becoming  capable  of  the  economic 
blush.  A  new  sense  of  shame  is  reaching  industry  and 
politics,  the  two  regions  where  we  of  little  faith  never 
supposed  it  would  arrive.  No  one  who  has  ever  really 
grasped  the  unity  of  all  truth  could  have  ever  doubted 
that  this  would  be  the  result  of  human  experience. 

Wealth  is  then  only  the  cruder  form,  the  primitive 
form,  in  which  men  serve  each  other.  It  is  not  to  be 
denounced,  for  in  itself  it  is  good,  and  in  its  place  it  is 
legitimate,  honourable  and  ethical.  Private  wealth  will 
always  exist ;  it  will  be  the  pioneer  of  the  human  evolution, 
treading  the  new  ways,  going  where  individual  qualities 
are  indispensable,  as  in  the  conquest  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican continent,  where  the  community  cannot  lead- 
Private  wealth  will  always  exist  for  the  material  basis — 
the  sustenance  of  those  provinces  of  the  personal  life  too 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  251 

intimate  to  be  permitted  to  pass  tinder  any  kind  of 
cognizance  from  without. 

The  vast  extent  of  the  unemployed,  the  vast  amount 
of  work  undone,  shows  that  even  as  Captains  of  Industry, 
even  as  leaders  of  economic  development,  the  present 
captains  are  derelict,  and  that  new  aims,  new  ideals,  new 
energies,  new  leaders  are  wanted.  The  Captains  of 
Industry,  the  railroad  men,  have  been  selected  by  the 
unconscious  but  no  less  potential  will  of  society  as  leaders 
in  the  industrial  work  which  has  been  characteristic  of 
our  time.  When  that  is  done — and  certainly  the  main 
features  of  the  scheme  for  overlaying  the  world  with 
steam  boilers  and  electric  batteries,  Boards  of  Trade, 
bazaars,  and  the  apparatus  of  high  finance  has  been 
done — a  different  work  presents  itself,  that  is,  to  prevent 
the  benefits  of  these  fruits  of  human  ingenuity,  talent, 
inspiration  and  the  generosity  of  nature  from  being 
made  the  preserve  of  a  few.  That  has  always  been  the 
tendency.  The  strong  in  every  community  have  always 
sought  to  take  for  themselves  the  larger  share  of  the 
conquests  and  inventions  made  by  the  people,  to  which 
the  people  as  age  succeeds  age  assent  with  less  and  less 
heartiness  and  ask  for  and  take  more  and  more.  The 
work  for  reform,  redistribution,  justice,  is  now  pressing. 
These  works,  as  part  of  the  common  heritage  of  the 
commonwealth,  must  be  administered  for  the  common 
benefit.  Society  will  exert  its  right  to  choose  other 
leaders. 

The  very  men  who  lead  so  successfully  in  the  ferocities 
of  competition  would  under  a  different  system  be  equally 
eminent  as  leaders  in  good  works.  Their  love  of  excellence 
and  of  approbation  would  keep  them  as  much  at  the  head 
n  a  race  to  be  best  as  in  the  race  to  be  richest.  These 
men,  these  merchants,  manufacturers,  lawyers,  possess 


252  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

every  intuition  of  goodness,  truth  and  beauty  of  life  as 
strongly  as  do  the  men  who  preach,  teach,  rhyme  or 
reform.  If  they  are  still  competitive,  it  is  because  the 
society  which  brought  them  up  has  taught  them  to  be  so. 

It  is  important  to  remember  that  the  present  wage  sys- 
tem is  absolutely  new — but  one  hundred  years  old  or  less. 
It  has  produced  enormous  benefits  to  employers,  and  to 
society — so  far  as  the  latter  is  benefitted  by  reproduction 
in  vast  quantities  and  at  depressing  prices  for  certain 
things  in  iron,  wool,  etc.  But  it  cannot  last,  nor  be 
wished  to  last,  if  for  these  it  sacrifices  things  more  precious, 
things  for  which  men  have  always  cared  more  than  for 
excess  of  things  to  wear — personal  independence,  health, 
home,  life,  leisure.  It  cannot  stand  comparison  with  the 
system  that  preceded  it  if  it  is  less  advantageous  in  these 
respects. 

Private  property  being  individualism,  and  its  abolition 
being  socialism,  the  two  are  correlative  and  must  yield 
to  each  other  just  as  rapidly  as  experience  and  necessity 
dictate.  Civilisation  is  a  growth  both  ways — an  in- 
tensification of  private  property  in  certain  ways,  an 
abolition  of  it  in  others.  The  home  property  is  likely 
to  become  more  and  more  individual  or  familistic  as 
against  the  community,  but  those  forms  of  property  in 
which  the  welfare  of  others  is  more  concerned  than 
that  of  the  owner  will  be  modified  or  abolished.  The 
wonderful  development  of  the  modern  individual  out  of 
the  rudimentary  monotony  of  the  tribe  or  animal  life, 
has  gone  on  with  an  equally  wonderful  development  of 
the  socialisation  of  the  postoffice,  the  administration  of 
justice,  wagon  roads,  schools,  currency,  police  and  war 
all  of  which  used  to  be  entirely  or  partially  individual, 
The  higher  the  individualism  the  higher  must  be  the 
socialism.  The  resultant  of  these  opposing  forces  o 


CHURCH  OF  THH  DEED  253 

socialism  and  individualism  must  be  determined  by  each 
age  for  itself,  but  history  shows  plainly  how  the  lines 
advance  on  each  other. 

The  commonwealth,  co-operative  and  democratic,  will 
always  be  enlarging  its  borders,  taking  up  new  tracts  of 
property  prepared  for  it  by  the  pioneer  work  of  capitalism. 
The  commonwealth  the  world  over  is  manifestly  now 
preparing  to  take  up  from  the  monopolists  all  such 
public  utilities  as  gas,  light,  water  and  transportation 
monopolies,  just  as  it  has  already  taken  up  the  roads, 
which  "were  not  so  long  ago  private  property.  The 
curves  of  our  present  evolution  seem  to  indicate  that 
over  large  areas  the  movement  toward  commonwealth 
will  remain  non-political  and  will  simply  be  co-operative. 
There  is  an  evident  tendency  in  England  toward  co- 
operative farming,  though  not  yet  fairly  launched.  The 
success  of  co-operation  in  Ireland  shows  how  this  may 
lead  to  the  settlement  of  the  Land  Question  in  England 
by  land  resumption  to  establish  co-operative  land  owning 
and  cultivation.  The  co-operator  can  buy  the  land 
and  make  money  out  of  it,  where  the  present  landlord 
system  can  have  but  one  eventuality,  the  ruin  of  the  land- 
lord, the  tenant  and  the  labourer. 

Co-operation  and  democratic  wealth  on  the  one  side, 
and  capitalist  wealth  on  the  other,  use  much  the  same 
instruments  of  business;  there  are  the  same  processes  of 
industry,  employment  of  labour,  the  display  of  goods, 
salesmen,  stores,  railroad  ticket  offices  and  the  like.  The 
two  differ  in  no  essential  respect  but  one,  and  that  is 
essential  enough.  Co-operative  and  democratic  business 
are  done  with  an  avowed  reference  to  the  welfare  of  others. 
The  people  of  New  Zealand,  in  running  their  railroads, 
in  disposing  among  the  people  the  lands  they  have  taken 
away  from  the  large  land  owners,  in  loaning  money  from 


254  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

the  Treasury  to  the  farmers  and  workingmen  to  save 
them  from  the  usurer,  explicitly  refrain  from  any  attempt 
at  making  a  profit.  All  these  operations  have  been 
profitable,  but  as  the  profits  have  mounted  the  people 
have  reduced  their  charges.  It  is  their  settled  policy  thus 
to  lower  their  railroad  tariff,  their  land  rents  and  their 
rates  of  interest.  It  is  specifically  enacted,  in  the  New 
Zealand  law  putting  the  government  into  the  coal  business 
to  break  the  coal  trust,  that  as  rapidly  as  profits  increase 
above  5  per  cent,  the  price  of  coal  is  to  be  reduced  to 
the  consumers.  One  and  two  dollars  a  ton  on  every  ton 
of  coal  burned  in  New  Zealand  will  thus  be  legislated. 
The  coal  burned  in  New  Zealand  hereafter,  by  this  legis- 
lation, by  this  recourse  of  the  New  Zealand  democracy  to 
the  money  value  of  their  own  votes,  will  be  diverted 
from  its  previous  flow  into  private  wealth  into  common- 
wealth. 

The  co-operators  in  Belgium  do  not  even  make  dividends 
in  money,  as  the  English  co-operators  do.  Their  most 
highly  cherished  purpose  is  to  help  each  other,  and 
especially  to  make  money  for  a  democratic  propaganda. 
In  Belgium,  consequently,  we  see  the  most  unique 
spectacle  in  the  social  movement  of  to-day.  The  people 
have  established  a  co-operation  far  more  noteworthy 
than  that  which  deals  in  goods  or  money.  Emerson  says 
there  is  nothing  a  reformer  hates  so  much  as  another 
reformer.  But  the  Belgians  have  made  reformers  co- 
operate— Socialists,  Trade  Unions,  Co-operators,  Friendly 
Societies,  are  all  united  in  one  common  movement  to  trans- 
fer the  control  of  the  industry  of  the  state  to  the  people. 
Their  co-operative  stores  and  bakeries  and  manufactures 
have  been  established  and  are  carried  on  to  find  the 
money  for  democratic  propaganda — the  only  place  in  the 
world  where  reform  is  making  the  money  to  carry  itself 


CHURCH  OF  THE  DEED  255 

along.  Their  great  man  among  many  great  men,  Anseele, 
says  that  to  be  economically  successful  the  co-operator 
must  be  a  reformer,  and  the  success  of  his  work,  which 
has  built  up  in  Belgium  a  democratic  party  relatively 
three  times  as  strong  as  that  in  Germany,  proves  also 
that  the  reformer  to  be  successful  must  be  a  co-operator. 

Here  is  a  large  body  of  actual  experiences,  gathered 
from  all  parts  of  the  world  and  from  private  as  well  as 
public  effort,  co-operative  as  well  as  democratic,  showing 
that  the  altruistic  motive  can  be  made  a  working  force 
in  the  production,  accumulation  and  distribution  of 
wealth,  and,  the  evidence  seems  to  show,  can  be  made  a 
force  superior  to  that  of  the  smaller  self-interest  of  personal 
and  corporate  wealth. 

In  the  coming  crash,  which  must  follow  the  insane 
wars  of  troops  and  tariffs  and  all  the  insensate  suppression 
of  wealth  involved  in  property  become  monopoly  and 
opportunity  become  privilege,  those  countries  will  have 
the  best  chance  of  survival  which  have  the  least  wealth 
and  the  most  commonwealth.  What  oak  there  is  left 
in  the  timbers  of  England  is  co-operative.  That  co- 
operative one-sixth  of  the  population  will  be  the  saving 
remnant  that  will  save  the  rest.  The  wealth  created  by 
a  thousand  men  under  the  motive  power  of  the  self- 
interest  of  the  capitalist  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  equal  to 
the  wealth  that  will  be  created  by  the  same  men  under 
the  motive  power  of  co-operation  or  democracy.  The 
system  which  comes  nearest  to  calling  out  all  the  self- 
interests  and  using  all  the  faculties  and  sharing  all  the 
benefits  will  out  compete  any  system  that  strikes  a  lower 
level  of  motive  faculty  and  profit.  The  capitalists  are 
the  co-operators  that  were ;  the  people  are  the  co-operators 
that  will  be. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   RELIGION   OF   LABOUR 

WE  know  that  John  Wesley  had  a  religion.  He  was  a 
doer  of  right  and  an  undoer  of  wrong.  He  faced  the 
rage  of  mobs  and  the  anathemas  of  bishops  to  carry  the 
gospel  to  the  multitude  left  outside  the  Church  by  the 
Church.  And  like  another  who  had  compassion  on  the 
multitude,  he  fed,  healed  and  comforted  them  as  well  as 
preached  to  them.  In  his  banks  for  the  poor  he  was  a 
pioneer  of  the  people's  banks,  which  are  to-day  the 
chief  glory  of  the  wonderful  co-operative  movement  now 
bringing  economic  redemption  to  the  peasants  and  work- 
ingmen  of  Europe.  It  was  the  sins  that  were  new  and 
fashionable  and  the  sinners  that  were  great,  rich  and 
successful  that  he  gave  his  attention  to.  He  was  not 
looking  for  endowments.  He  was  a  religious  genius 
and  could  detect  that  sin  of  sins,  hatred  of  brothers,  in  any 
new  disguise  of  greed. 

When  slavery  and  the  slave  trade  was  a  rich  and  re- 
spectable "business,"  followed  by  the  greatest,  even  by 
governments,  defended  by  the  Church,  the  courts  and 
the  professors  of  divinity  and  political  economy,  he 
denounced  it  with  a  fervour  like  that  which  scorched  the 
Scribes,  the  Pharisees,  the  lawyers,  the  rich  of  another 
time.  In  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  Wesley 
coined  phrases  and  forged  weapons  against  slavery  which 
every  abolitionist  was  using  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  Slavery  was  so  unquestioned  that  even  the 
evangelist  Whitefield  engaged  in  it,  being  at  the  same 

256 


RELIGION  OP  LABOUR  257 

f 

time  slaveholder  and  revivalist.  But  Wesley  in  1772 
thundered  against  it  those  immortal  words,  since  quoted 
millions  of  times,  "that  execrable  sum  of  all  villainies." 
This  was  fifteen  years  before  the  foundation  of  the  Society 
for  the  Suppression  of  the  Slave  Trade,  sixty-six  years 
before  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  West  Indies,  ninety- 
one  years  before  our  Emancipation  Proclamation. 

John  Wesley  said  to  the  men  of  his  day  who  ground  up 
the  poor  in  what  they  called  "business":  "Thy  hands, 
thy  bed,  thy  furniture,  thy  house,  thy  lands,  are  stained 
with  blood."  What  would  Wesley  say,  if  he  were  here 
to-day,  to  the  death  rate  in  the  sweat  shops  and  on  the 
railroads?  "Men-buyers  are  exactly  on  a  level  with 
men-stealers,"  declared  Wesley.  What  would  he  say 
to-day  to  the  rich  men  who  fill  the  cotton  mills  of  Georgia 
and  the  silk  mills  of  Pennsylvania  with  babies,  often 
working  all  night — child-buyers  who  are  men-stealers, 
stealing  from  these  little  ones ,  and  so  from  all  of  us 
their  future  manhood  and  womanhood,  their  fatherhood 
and  motherhood,  and  their  citizenship?  There  were  men 
then,  as  now,  who  manipulated  the  markets  to  ruin  their 
neighbours.  What  Wesley  said  to  them  would  he  not 
now  say  to  Wall  Street  and  all  other  such  streets?  "  None 
can  gain  by  swallowing  up  his  neighbour's  substance  with- 
out gaining  the  damnation  of  hell."  No  one  ever  accused 
John  Wesley  of  preaching  only  "the  simple  gospel." 

He  did  not  contribute  to  make  the  Church  itself  the 
greatest  gravestone  in  our  churchyards — tomb  of  the 
fidelity  of  preacher  and  people  alike  to  the  teachings  of 
Christ — until  no  stone  and  epitaph  in  all  those  rows  is  so 
dumb  in  its  silence,  so  false  in  its  utterance,  as  that 
mausoleum  of  the  promises  of  religion — the  Church. 

This  was  the  John  Wesley  who  brought  us  here,  and 
this  was  religion.  Religion  is  the  joining  of  all  men 


258  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

together  in  doing  right  and  undoing  wrong — the  love  of 
God  and  man.  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them — 
religions  as  well  as  men.  The  religion  of  labour  is  not 
a  new  religion.  It  is  the  hope  and  prayer  of  labour, 
which  is  the  people,  which  is  the  poor — that  out  of  its 
pain,  poverty  and  want  it  may  be  shaping  a  new  loving- 
cup  for  the  old  religion. 

Our  Mayflower  Pilgrims  had  the  courage  to  begin  the 
pilgrimage  out  of  England  into  Holland,  which  continued 
to  Plymouth  Rock  and  Independence  Hall,  because,  as 
their  Pastor  Robinson  said :  "  They  were  persuaded  that 
God  had  still  greater  truths  to  break  forth  out  of  his 
Holy  Word."  Before  leaving  the  sweet  fields  and  homes  of 
England  they  made  the  Pilgrim's  Covenant  of  1602,  under 
the  sacred  rafters  of  Scrooby  Church,  "  to  walk  together  in 
all  the  Lord's  ways  made  known  or  to  be  made  known." 

The  religious  news  of  to-day  is  that  this  pilgrimage 
is  still  continuing,  and  is  becoming  a  new  crusade  to  carry 
the  banners  and  the  cross  of  the  old  religion  into  the  new 
worlds  of  modern  business  and  industry.  This  is  the 
Religion  of  Labour.  Its  texts — texts  of  love,  of  the  God- 
hood  of  Man,  and  the  Manhood  of  God — are  all  old. 
What  is  new  is  that  with  all  their  failures  men  have 
harvested  success  enough  out  of  their  past  covenants  of 
the  Family,  Church  and  State  to  give  them  courage  to 
try  a  new  covenant,  which  will  be  the  greatest  covenant 
of  all.  New  truth  is  breaking  forth  and  men  are  learning 
to  walk  together  in  many  new  ways,  "made  known  and 
to  be  made  known"  in  public  life  and  private.  Modern 
democracy  is  the  first-born  son  of  the  liberty  that  came 
with  Christ,  and  the  first-born  son  of  Democracy  in 
Government  will  be  Democracy  in  Industry.  First  the 
freedom  of  the  worshipper,  then  the  freedom  of  the 
citizen,  now  the  freedom  of  all  men  as  workers. 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  259 

Co-operation  in  England,  on  the  Continent,  in  America, 
is  a  covenant  by  which  the  people  "walk  together"  by 
owning  together  their  own  farms,  mills,  banks,  factories, 
dairies  and  stores.  The  methods  and  motives  of  industry 
are  being  revolutionised;  the  people  employ  each  other. 
All  are  shareholders,  and  all  share  the  profits,  ownership 
and  management.  The  working  women  who  can  be 
seen  in  the  morning  at  the  bench  in  the  co-operative 
factory,  in  the  evening  sit  as  Directors  on  the  Board 
of  Direction  of  their  own  factory.  These  working  men 
and  women  are  lifting  themselves  from  hirelings  to  part- 
ners. In  Co-operation  Land  we  see  Business  set  to 
music,  democracy,  the  Golden  Rule  and  the  eleven 
commandments. 

Politics  is  a  covenant  of  public  co-operation  by  which 
citizen  is  supplying  citizen  with  light,  transportation, 
justice,  defense,  education  and  many  other  necessities 
of  life  by  democratic  ownership  and  operation  of,  by 
and  for  the  people.  In  these  co-operations  of  the  farmers t 
and  workingmen,  and  voters,  the  predominant  motive  is 
not  profit,  but  service  for  service  without  profit,  doing 
as  you  would  be  done  by,  bearing  one  another's  burden, 
love  in  business.  It  dawns  on  man  that  here  at  last  is 
one  of  the  "still  greater  truths"  which  was  "to  break 
forth."  Men  can  lead  the  life  of  love  together  in  the 
world  of  work.  It  is  literally  true  that  in  these  co- 
operations, public  and  private,  in  these  stores  and  mills 
and  banks  of  the  covenant  of  business  by  co-operation, 
and  in  these  municipalisations  and  nationalisations, 
which  are  covenants  of  business  by  democracy,  every 
principle  and  nearly  every  method  needed  for  the  democ- 
ratisation  of  wealth,  that  is  the  Christianisation  of 
wealth,  has  been  tested  and  found  practicable.  We  do 
but  need  to  do  everywhere  what  some  one  is  doing 


26o  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL   CREATOR 

somewhere  or  other  in  these  experiments.  We  do  but 
all  need  to  do  what  a  few  are  doing.  We  do  but  need  to 
generalise  our  partial  and  local  co-operations  into  a 
greater  whole. 

The  chemist  trying  to  make  some  obstinate  liquid 
crystalise  throws  into  it  a  few  crystals  of  its  own  sub- 
stance, and  instantly  the  whole  mass  crystallises  as  if 
its  atoms,  charmed  into  obedience,  rush  together  to  be 
in  harmony  with  their  visitors  from  without.  The 
perfection  of  the  few  perfected  the  mass.  It  has  been 
so  before  among  men.  It  will  be  so  again.  These  co- 
operations, democratisations,  brotherhoods  may  seem 
few,  but  they  are  crystals  and  crystalisation  is  contagious. 
Labour  is  not  a  class,  labour  is  the  whole  people,  and  its 
gospel  is  the  gospel  to  which  all  the  great  and  good,  under 
whatever  name,  have  dedicated  theselves.  It  is  the 
same  eternal  cause  to  which  Emerson  devoted  himself 
in  his  words,  "the  eternal  cause  of  the  advancement  of 
the  Kingdom  of  God  in  the  hearts  of  men."  To  advance 
this  Kingdom  of  God  into  the  unevangelised  territory  of 
trade,  commerce  and  industry,  is  the  mission  of  the 
Religion  of  Labour.  The  very  heart  of  democracy  is 
love  of  God  and  neighbour.  The  republic,  equality, 
citizenship,  doing  as  you  would  be  done  by  in  govern- 
ment, is  the  political  side  of  Christianity.  The  Religion 
of  Labour,  doing  as  you  would  be  done  by  in  the  world's 
work,  is  the  industrial  side  of  Christianity. 

We  thought  two  thousand  years  of  martyrs  and  patriots 
had  made  us  free.  We  find  ourselves  so  hard  pressed  in 
our  affairs  that  we  cannot  maintain  the  old  freedoms 
unless  we  win  new  ones.  We  must  have  freedom  of 
access  to  land,  to  credit,  to  tools  of  industry,  to  employ- 
ment, to  our  fellow-men — freedom  of  access  to  all  nature. 
The  people  can  be  religiously  free  only  if  they  are  econom- 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  261 

ically  free ;  the  hermit,  the  mendicant  friar  are  the  excep- 
tions that  prove  the  rule.  Only  by  freedom  of  access 
to  nature  can  all  be  free  of  access  to  nature's  God.  Only 
by  such  freedom  can  we  be  free  to  give  or  withhold  our- 
selves as  citizens ;  to  say  yes  or  no  to  bosses  or  billionaires 
and  be  politically  free.  Only  so  can  we  have  that  liberty 
to  buy  or  sell,  ourselves  or  our  commodities,  by  which 
we  may  be  economically  free. 

The  people  who  are  too  busy,  and  too  poor,  and 
too  honest,  as  labourers,  workmen,  clerks,  shopkeepers, 
professional  men,  to  give  nights  and  days,  money  and 
energy  to  the  city  hall,  the  primary,  the  party  conven- 
tions, the  lobby,  are  only  the  beasts  of  burden  of  politics. 
Not  until  they  make  themselves  their  own  masters  in 
their  business,  their  industry,  their  livelihood,  masters  of 
their  own  time,  their  own  money,  their  own  opinion, 
their  own  wills,  can  they  be  masters  in  their  government, 
or  in  their  churches,  or  anywhere.  Slave  anywhere  is 
slave  everywhere.  You  cannot  make  a  rope  of  sand,  an 
army  of  sheep,  a  democracy  of  cowards — nor  a  Church. 

Of  course  not  every  one  is  fit  to  give  and  take  with 
us  the  reciprocities  of  a  republic.  There  are  "weaker 
peoples."  Our  circumstances  are  imperial,  and  becoming 
more  imperial.  But  in  a  Christian  empire  every  fellow- 
man  must  be  either  citizen  or  child.  In  either  view 
of  the  life  together,  whether  we  be  paternal  or  political 
toward  them,  the  things  we  are  actually  doing  to  the 
poor — the  red,  yellow,  black  and  white  poor — at  home 
and  abroad,  in  government  and  industry,  are  damnable. 

If  we  are  not  to  steal,  not  to  kill,  if  we  are  to  "  love  one 
another,"  if  we  are  to  do  unto  others  as  we  would  that 
they  should  do  unto  us,  anywhere,  we  are  to  do  it  every- 
where— in  the  railroad  problem,  in  labour  disputes,  on  the 
stock  exchange.  The  only  rule  possible  for  Christian 


262  MAN,  THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

capitalists,  if  they  organise  to  deal  with  their  miners 
through  presidents  and  general  superintendents,  is  to 
permit  their  miners  to  organise,  to  deal  in  the  same 
delegate  method  with  them. 

To  put  the  doctrine  of  the  Religion  of  Labour  into  actual 
practice  there  is  already  a  piety  organised,  at  work,  in 
different  cities  and  countries,  those  which  are  most 
democratic,  embodying  them  in  city  traction,  in  railroad- 
ing, in  land  reform,  in  borrowing  and  lending  money,  in 
manufacturing  commodities,  in  buying  and  selling  goods, 
in  employing  labour,  striving  to  realise  intentionally  the 
earthly  meaning  of  heavenly  words.  This  is  the  religious 
news  of  to-day.  London  takes  municipal  possession  of 
street-car  lines  and  equips  them  with  the  most  modern 
machinery  of  traction;  builds  the  underground  trolley, 
for  which  the  private  companies  had  not  the  enterprise; 
raises  the  wages  of  the  men,  shortens  their  hours,  gives 
them  a  six-days'  week,  and  carries  the  people  short 
distances  for  a  cent.  This  municipal  capitalist  substi- 
tutes the  general  welfare  for  selfish  profit.  The  city 
of  Glasgow  does  likewise,  and  enters  its  surplus  from 
city-owned  and  city-operated  street  cars  in  its  book- 
keeping under  the  heading,  "The  Common  Good." 
By  the  motives  which  the  community  obeys,  by  the  fact 
of  being  a  community,  it  substitutes  the  equalisation  of 
welfare  in  place  of  the  creation  of  traction  millionaires, 
and  the  transportation  business  ceases  to  be  business  and 
becomes  a  successful  experiment  in  applied  Christianity. 

In  the  democracy  of  New  Zealand  the  people  unite  as  a 
nation  to  release  each  other  from  the  money  trust.  They 
borrow  money  cheap  in  London  at  wholesale  to  lend  it 
again  at  retail  to  the  workingman  and  farmer  at  cost. 
They  buy  and  operate  at  cost  coal  mines,  railroads  and 
yards,  to  deliver  each  other  from  the  coal  trust.  They 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  263 

do  this  avowedly  to  abolish  those  twin  curses  of  civilisation 
— the  millionaire  and  the  pauper.  What  is  this  but  doing, 
as  a  nation,  as  you  would  be  done  by?  What  more 
Christian  way  could  there  be  of  making  good  the  Divine 
Command  to  the  rich  young  man,  to  sell  all  that  he  had 
and  give  it  to  the  poor,  that  is,  the  people.  What  more 
Christian  method  of  getting  at  work  the  Divine  Impreca- 
tion, "Woe  unto  you  that  are  rich.  Woe  unto  you  that 
are  full."  The  same  antipodal  democrats  of  Australasia 
tax  land  and  make  the  tax  progressive,  tax  incomes  and 
make  the  tax  progressive,  tax  inheritances  and  make 
the  tax  progressive.  The  more  land,  income,  inheritance 
a  man  has  the  more  he  pays,  both  actually  and  relatively. 
Thus  these  New  Zealanders  are  making  good  in  fiscal 
science,  the  Biblical  requirement  that  "unto  whomsoever 
much  is  given,  of  him  much  shall  be  required."  The  same 
people  are  using  the  railroads  owned  by  the  people  to 
carry  the  school  children  free;  and  to  carry  the  unem- 
ployed men  with  their  children  and  wives  to  places  where 
their  fellow-citizens  provide  them  with  work,  and  land, 
and  homes.  We  other  peoples  who  do  not  do  these  things, 
which  our  Swiss  and  English  and  Scotch  and  Australasian 
brothers  have  found  the  way  to  do,  are  to  that  extent 
less  Christian  because  less  democratic,  and  are  less 
peaceful,  less  happy,  less  prosperous. 

We  give  to  a  few  for  private  profit  highway  privileges 
that  are  the  property  of  all.  We  submit  in  the  province  of 
transportation  to  powers  over  which  we  have  no  control. 
The  land,  the  laws,  the  forces  of  nature,  the  charters  that 
make  a  railroad,  should  be  exploited  by  mutual  effort  for 
mutual  development.  We  allow  them  to  be  exploited 
by  the  few  for  the  good  of  the  few — and  a  false  good  even 
for  them.  We  see  the  fruit  of  the  labour  of  all  drained 
away  by  extortionate  freight  and  passenger  charges, 


264  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

into  exorbitant  fortunes  for  billionaires,  and  if  things 
go  on  so  much  longer  there  will  soon  be  trillionaires. 
We  let  the  social  product  be  embezzled,  divided  into 
excess  for  all — excess  of  wealth  for  some,  excess  of  poverty 
for  most. 

The  Swiss  democracy  have  been  re-establishing  the 
people  of  Switzerland  in  equal  rights  on  the  railroads, 
making  every  citizen  an  owner,  giving  every  citizen  a 
voice  in  making  the  fares  and  freights  he  pays.  They 
have  installed  "doing  as  you  would  be  done  by"  as 
the  freight-rate  maker  and  the  passenger-rate  maker 
instead  of  private  desires  for  dividends.  Meanwhile  we 
look  idly  on  while  our  common  property  in  the  streets  and 
highways  becomes  the  estate  of  fewer  and  fewer,  greedier 
and  greedier,  and  our  rights  on  the  highways  follow  our 
property  in  the  highways. 

The  appalling  fact  is  established  by  the  reports,  appeals 
and  protestations  and  alarums  issued  to  the  American 
people  by  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission,  which 
has  been  faithful  unto  death — its  own  death — that  our 
railroads  between  the  States  are  now  making  their  own 
rates  and  charges  as  they  please,  and  deciding  for  them- 
selves with  no  interference  by  any  court  or  other  authority 
what  they  will  take  from  us  when  we  ship  freight  or 
ourselves.  The  Commission  tell  us  that  we  have  no 
remedy  to-day  for  extortions  on  the  highways — no 
remedy  in  damages;  no  remedy  in  criminal  prosecution; 
no  prevention  by  Congress;  none  by  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission  or  any  other  authority. 

The  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  was  instituted  to 
protect  the  people  of  America  in  highway  rights  and 
justice,  which  no  people  till  now  have  surrendered. 
The  only  power  left  to  it  by  the  corporation  lawyers, 
and  the  United  States  Supreme  Court,  is  to  investigate 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  265 

our  wrongs  and  report  the  result  of  its  investigations — 
to  itself.  This  is  one  of  the  slave  trades  of  our  day,  and 
we  must  be  Wesleys  in  moral  courage  and  the  economic 
insight  and  foresight  with  which  we  meet  it,  as  he  de- 
nounced the  slave  trade  when  it  was  a  rich  and  respectable 
business. 

If  history  has  any  lesson  it  is  that  mankind  are  cease- 
lessly outgrowing  their  institutions — all  of  them.  The 
genius  which  invented  can  reinvent.  The  same  authority 
that  gave  the  old  can  give  the  new.  All  institutions  are 
transient.  They  serve  the  day,  and  then  give  way  to 
better  contrivances  for  expressing  the  ideals  of  the  world. 

A  new  sacrifice  is  being  discovered  or  invented,  as  you 
choose,  to  be  added  to  the  uplifting  mechanics  of  social 
reciprocity — association  or  the  friendly  life  together  of 
the  men  in  the  world.  This  is  the  making  sacred  of  the 
common  toil  by  which  men  build  up  the  common  weal. 
It  would  repeal  the  curse  once  pronounced  upon  labour, 
and  have  men  crown  it  as  a  blessing.  When  work  was 
done  by  slaves,  philosophy,  justifying  the  social  arrange- 
ments, declared  labour  to  be  a  curse.  This  was  to  say, 
as  people  say  now-a-days,  if  men  are  poor  it  is  because 
they  deserve  to  be,  it  was  to  apply  to  modern  life  the 
outworn  view  of  Aristotle.  But  modern  science,  divin- 
ing the  secrets  of  development,  has  it  that  exercise  of 
faculty  is  a  pleasure,  that  "organs,  senses,  affections, 
passions"  are  for  use,  not  for  atrophy,  and  that  labour 
is  a  blessing.  The  new  law  of  selfsacrifice  says,  let 
us  keep  labour  a  blessing  by  making  it  free.  Free — that 
is,  obedient  to  the  laws  of  life.  One  of  the  first  of  these 
is  that  all  who  share  the  fruits  shall  share  the  efforts 
that  produce  it,  and  vice  versa.  They  who  eat  shall 
sweat,  and  they  who  sweat  shall  eat. 

The  Labour  movement  halted  and  failed  of  support 


266  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

while  it  spoke  in  terms  of  a  special  class  and  of  restricted 
motives.  But,  if  based  on  a  universal  motive,  it  be- 
comes spokesman  for  all  and  will  evidently  speak  with 
authority. 

To  be  a  monopolist,  or  to  submit  to  monopoly,  or  to 
allow  our  brothers  and  sisters  to  submit  to  monopoly,  is 
wholly  and  irreconcilably  inconsistent  with  "doing  the 
will  of  the  father,"  or  "coming  unto  me,"  or  trying  to 
"be  perfect,"  which  is  loving  God,  and  wholly  irreconcil- 
able with  "doing  as  you  would  be  done  by,"  "bearing 
one  another's  burdens,"  which  is  loving  your  neighbour. 

It  is  our  guilt  in  all  this,  not  that  of  the  other  man, 
which  is  our  first  and  greatest  concern.  It  is  we,  the 
people,  who  are  responsible.  The  beam  is  in  our  eye. 
These  kings  of  the  world  of  "  Get-Rich-Quick-No-Matter- 
How"  are  our  representative  men.  They  incarnate  the 
false  gods  we  have  put  in  the  place  of  the  only  true  God. 
It  is  our  applause  that  makes  them  possible.  If  we 
would  all  refuse  them  our  -hands  and  our  smiles  for 
one  day,  they  would  be  on  their  knees  asking  what  they 
could  do  to  be  saved.  When  we  go  to  the  "bargain" 
counters  to  buy  the  bodies  of  little  children  and  starving 
women  bleached  into  snow-white  tissues  for  our  backs — 
"goods"  that  ought  to  be  called  "bads" — we  are  shop- 
lifters in  the  worst  sense  of  that  word.  If  millions  of  com- 
petitive capital  are  ready  to  furnish  street-car  rides  for 
three  cents,  and  if  the  people  could  give  them  to  them- 
selves for  one  cent,  as  in  London,  we  are  worse  than  the 
traction  millionaires — in  sitting  passive  as  we  do,  in 
allowing  working  children  and  workingmen,  the  people, 
to  be  charged  five  cents.  The  millionaires  are  true  to 
their  nature,  but  we  are  not  true  to  the  nature  we  profess 
of  Christians  and  Democrats.  We  and  we  only  have 
the  power  to  stop  it  all. 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  267 

The  Religion  of  Labour  has  its  ten  commandments. 
But  they  are  the  same  old  commandments.  "No  new 
commandment  but  an  old  commandment  which  ye  had 
from  the  beginning." 

"Honour  thy  father  and  thy  mother."  There  is  but 
one  people  to-day  that  has  made  so  much  as  an  approach 
to  honouring  its  fathers  and  mothers — the  Australasian 
people  who  give  their  destitute  old  fathers  and  mothers 
old-age  pensions. 

"Six  days  shalt  thou  labour."  The  people  of  Switzer- 
land have  been  democrats  longer  than  any  of  the  rest  of 
us,  six  hundred  years,  and  ought  to  be  the  best  democrats, 
as  they  are.  They  remembered  the  commandment  for 
a  seventh  day  of  rest,  by  giving  it  by  law  to  the  employees 
of  the  railroads.  Private  enterprise  found  the  fourth 
commandment  "impracticable,"  but  the  democracy  of 
London  and  Switzerland  can  obey  it  and  make  money, 
and  make  something  better  than  money — manhood — 
and  that  is  the  Religion  of  Labour. 

"  Thou  shalt  not  kill."  The  democracy  of  New  Zealand 
runs  its  railroads  so  humanely  and  conscientiously  that 
in  some  years  not  a  single  passenger  or  railroad  man  is 
killed.  On  the  railroads  of  this  country  in  one  year  there 
were  killed  8,588,  and  wounded  64,662,  the  death  roll  of 
a  war.  The  Religion  of  Labour  says:  There  is  never 
any  disobedience  of  the  commandment  "Thou  shalt  not 
kill"  if  it  is  not  disobeyed  when  such  needless  slaughter 
occurs  because  the  laws  requiring  life  saving  appliances 
are  disregarded,  because  men  are  overworked,  because 
grade  crossings  are  not  guarded,  because  incompetents 
are  put  where  life  depends  on  competence,  and  because 
profits  instead  of  being  devoted  to  improved  service  are 
spent  on  more  palaces,  more  yachts,  more  game  preserves, 
more  consolidations,  more  legislatures  and — other  luxuries. 


268  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

"Thou  shalt  not  steal." 

"Thou  shalt  not  bear  false  witness." 

"Thou  shalt  not  covet." 

Christ  sternly,  publicly  and  without  any  "if"  attacked 
the  rich  as  rich.  He  drove  the  stock  brokers  and  Board 
of  Trade  men  of  his  day  out  of  the  Church,  he  denounced 
the  rich  men  and  their  lawyers  for  devouring  the  poor, 
he  disputed  with  the  heads  of  the  Church  in  public,  and 
went  about  proclaiming  everywhere  the  divinity  of  man 
as  superior  to  the  divinity  of  institutions.  From  Moses 
and  Aaron,  who  organised  the  great  brickmakers'  strike 
of  the  Israelites  in  Egypt,  and  beyond  St.  Paul,  the 
preacher  of  sedition  in  the  streets,  the  Hebrew  prophets 
and  Christian  apostles  and  their  successors,  have  dealt 
with  the  contemporary  practical  questions  in  ways 
familiar  to  every  household. 

We  are  arrived  at  the  issue  for  which  all  the  other 
social  questions  of  history  have  been  but  preliminary. 
We  see  upon  us  the  supreme  issue  to  which  all  our  en- 
franchisements of  voters,  emancipations  of  slaves,  re- 
formations of  Churches,  have  been  but  opening  skirmishes. 
Here  it  comes — the  issue  of  the  ages — the  issue  between 
riches  and  religion,  between  riches  and  democracy, 
between  the  rich  and  the  people.  There  has  been  no 
history  which  the  poor  have  not  written,  and  by  them 
and  for  them  is  now  about  to  be  written  the  greatest 
chapter  of  all — not  to  make  the  rich  poor,  but  to  make  all 
the  people  rich. 

To  be  good  Christians  we  must  make  good  Christ's 
denunciation  of  wealth,  and  this  we  can  do  by  making 
it  commonwealth.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  an  honest 
dollar  in  what  we  call  "wealth."  Wealth  is  not  the 
home,  farm,  shop  or  savings  of  the  poor  man ;  it  is  riches, 
excess.  It  is  an  unfair  share  of  the  general  product 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  269 

which  was  made  by  the  co-operation  of  all.  Or,  it  is 
held  in  order  to  give  to  its  obtainers  or  inheritors  a 
welfare  superior  to  the  general  welfare.  Or,  it  was 
accumulated  by  getting  more  than  was  given.  Or,  it 
consists  of  what  was  the  property  of  others  got  from 
them  without  their  consent  or  even  knowledge,  and  very 
often  in  violation  of  the  law — by  stealing,  in  short,  in  the 
blunt  language  of  the  ten  commandments.  Or,  it  is 
enjoyed  by  its  owners  in  luxury,  and  a  misemployment 
of  labour,  and  a  closure  of  the  resources  of  nature  to 
the  people,  which  forbids  all  the  children — the  little  ones 
or  the  grown-ups — from  that  fulness  of  life  by  which  alone 
could  they  "come  unto  me." 

Such  wealth  is  wickedness,  and  its  wealthiest  are  the 
wickedest.  They  and  we,  who  are  their  accomplices  and 
accessories  before  and  after  the  fact,  violate  every  com- 
mandment of  the  eleven  or  cause  them  to  be  violated, 
which  is  worse.  We  are  guilty  even  under  the  seventh, 
for  by  misery  and  injustice,  which  are  inseparable,  we 
stimulate,  as  the  statistics  show,  every  form  of  social 
vice,  which  instantly  begins  to  disappear  the  moment 
justice  comes  in. 

As  our  era  of  civilisation  had  its  root  in  the  expansion 
of  Judaism  into  Christianity,  so  the  era  about  to  dawn 
has  for  its  fountain  the  expansion  of  that  Christianity 
from  a  religious  to  a  political,  industrial,  universal  force, 
operative  every  day  in  all  affairs  instead  of  only  on 
Sunday  and  in  the  narrow  circles  of  action  commonly 
included  within  "religious  matters."  The  idea  of  re- 
ligion is  to  be  expanded  until  the  people  firmly  grasp  that 
to  be  "religious"  is  not  an  occasional  virtue,  but  that 
as  a  matter  of  fact  our  religion  is  with  us  at  all  times,  in 
every  deed,  word  and  mood,  and  that  the  question  is 
really  between  a  good  religion  and  a  poor  one.  All  the 


270  MAN,  THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

words,  God,  Christ,  Heaven,  Hell,  Church,  Bible,  Religion, 
Sunday,  Worship,  Holy,  must  be  expanded  beyond  their 
present  contracted,  darkling,  bent-neck  superstition  and 
made  open,  every-day,  matter-of-fact,  common-place, 
familiar,  household  words.  To  make  the  most  of  our- 
selves, human  and  divine,  to  help  others  to  make  the 
most  of  themselves,  to  recognise  that  we  are  not  getting 
our  best  unless  all  our  neighbours  are  getting  their  best, 
to  create  the  institutions  which  will  make  it  possible 
for  all  the  people  to  lead  this  life  together — this  is  Demo- 
cracy and  Christianity.  This  Democracy  and  Christianity 
are  now  moving  forward  to  civilise  and  sanctify  the 
largest  of  all  the  fields  of  human  association — the  common 
toil.  This  is  the  Religion  of  Labour. 

As  in  the  old  times,  the  Church  and  the  State  are 
again  to  become  one.  History  repeats  itself,  though  on 
higher  levels,  and  again  politics  will  be  religion  and 
religion  politics,  as  in  the  cities  and  states  of  antiquity. 
All  art  and  all  arts  were  once  sacred  mysteries,  monopolies 
of  the  temple.  In  the  social  enthusiasm  we  can  see 
coming  they  will  regain  their  sacred  meaning,  more 
sacred  than  ever  because  no  longer  monopolies  but  the 
common  opportunity  of  all  the  people. 

We  separate  art  and  life  for  the  same  reason  that  we 
have  to  have  special  buildings  in  which  to  spend  our 
religious  moments.  The  art  gallery  and  the  church  are 
our  ugliness  and  our  atheism  made  manifest.  They  prove 
that  our  love  of  beauty  and  of  righteousness  are  "worlds 
not  realised."  These  buildings  are  the  mausoleums  to 
which  we  go  to  worship,  in  our  tributes  to  the  dead, 
the  resurrection  we  hope  for  in  them  and  in  ourselves. 
There  comes  a  day  when  we  shall  live  our  religion  and 
our  art.  In  that  day  we  shall  have  no  exclusive  temples 
of  holiness  and  beauty,  but  every  building,  like  every 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  271 

deed,  will  be  dedicated  to  the  good  and  the  beautiful,  not 
for  worship,  as  something  beyond  us,  but  for  use  in  this 
or  that  daily  expression  of  the  productive  energies  of 
the  common  life.  Piety  and  the  artistic  will  be  our 
constant  companion,  and  will  embroider  and  sanctify 
every  garment  and  every  tool. 

Men  dwell  on  tragedy  because  they  feel  within,  that 
their  destiny  is  to  achieve  its  opposite;  they  write  of 
oppression  because  their  hearts  contain  fountains  of 
brotherhood  urging  utterance.  As  the  race  grows  self- 
conscious  of  itjs  mission  and  destiny,  its  literature  becomes 
less  fatalistic,  and  the  creation  of  joy  for  all  becomes  more 
the  theme.  Jesus  himself  is  our  greatest  literary  man, 
He  whose  sayings  have  been  repeated  by  more  tongues, 
whose  stories  have  been  told  oftener,  whose  teachings  have 
caused  more  changes  in  human  institutions  than  those 
of  any  other  who  has  walked  among  us. 

Nature  ranges  from  its  lowest  bass  of  mere  law  and  fate 
to  highest  octaves  of  love  and  will.  There  is  no  justice, 
no  pity,  no  yielding,  no  pause,  no  response  in  nature. 
The  wind  that  would  cool  the  fever  does  not  blow;  the 
rain  that  would  save  the  first  crop  of  the  new  colony 
does  not  fall.  Upon  the  Puritans,  as  soon  as  landed  upon 
Plymouth  Rock,  descended  a  killing  winter  of  unusual 
severity.  Man  may  labour  faithfully  and  intelligently 
and  get  no  produce.  The  unblinking  moon  gazes  with 
equal  eyes  on  the  sad  and  gay.  The  stars  glisten  as 
brightly  whether  you  sink  or  swim.  The  sun  rises 
behind  clouds  on  your  wedding  morn,  and  rises  in  smiles 
when  you  are  weeping  over  the  loss  of  all  that  made 
life  dear.  The  violet  by  the  mossy  stone,  half-hidden 
from  the  eye,  yields  its  precious  virtue  as  gladly  to  the 
hand  that  has  sinned  as  to  the  pure.  But  the  touch  of 
the  hand  of  man,  the  look  of  the  human  eye,  the  smile 


272  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

sometimes  the  mere  sight  of  a  face  never  to  be  seen  again, 
fills  us  with  hope,  belief,  strength  and  inspiration.  If 
sympathy,  justice,  and  rectification  are  part  of  the 
scheme  of  nature,  they  are  carried  out  only  through  man, 
since,  although  God  is  expressed  by  all  nature,  it  is 
by  him  alone  that  is  expressed  the  principle  of  will, 
freedom,  love,  response,  the  idea  of  personality  as  opposed 
to  that  of  force,,  law,  system,  destiny.  Growth,  love, 
justice,  liberty,  brotherhood,  are  absolutely  inconsistent 
with  worship  of  institutions.  These  essences  or  spirits  seek 
to  realise  more  perfectly  the  aspiration  which,  although 
it  embodies  itself  in  forms,  must  in  the  fulness  of  time 
disembody  itself  to  reach  higher  expression.  The  worm 
first  builds  the  cocoon,  then  dies  within  it  to  wait  for 
resurrection  and  a  new  form  or  institution  of  higher 
beauty. 

The  Christian  disciples  and  the  Pilgrim  fathers  held 
things  in  common.  We  think  of  ourselves  of  having 
fallen  from  the  heights  of  that  early  faith.  The  com 
munism  of  the  early  Church  did  not  begin  to  approach  the 
communism  which  has  become  as  a  matter  of  course  with 
us,  who  take  from  every  one  according  to  his  ability  and 
give  to  all  according  to  their  need — schools,  water, 
police,  libraries,  highways,  sanitation,  and  the  rest. 
Modern  democracy,  the  rise  of  the  people  to  power,  has 
put  into  the  hands  of  the  doer  of  good  and  the  righter  of 
wrongs  a  tool  the  reformer  in  Wesley's  time  had  not. 
That  tool  is  the  free  democratic  republic,  through  which 
the  power  of  all  can  be  used  for  the  benefit  of  all.  Democ- 
racy is  the  use  of  all  the  resources  of  nature  by  all  the 
faculties  of  man  for  the  good  of  all  the  people.  The 
reformer  to-day  is  thrice-armed;  to  personal  effort  he 
can  add  political  effort.  He  can  socialise,  organise  the 
doing  of  good.  He  can  institutionalise  the  Golden  Rule. 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  273 

What  Wesley's  "hands  found  to  do"  he  did;  to-day  he 
would  be  our  greatest  doer  of  democracy.  In  the  pro- 
gressive democracies,  which  have  made  public  property 
of  the  railroads,  life  insurance,  telegraphs,  telephones, 
street  cars,  express  and  scores  of  other  businesses,  indi- 
vidual riches  have  been  made  impossible  to  that  extent 
by  converting  wealth  into  the  commonwealth  of  the 
free  state.  The  way  to  make  the  revival  of  religion 
continue  long  is  to  make  riches  democratic,  riches  of, 
by  and  for  all  the  people,  riches  of  the  Golden  Rule. 

The  next  Messiah  will  be  a  collective  Messiah,  said  a 
great  modern  liberator,  Mazzini,  martyr  of  Italian 
freedom,  and  prophet  of  freedom  in  all  ways,  economic 
as  well  as  political  and  spiritual,  for  all  men.  This 
collective  Messiah  will  be  the  whole  people,  democratising 
itself  and  its  wealth  for  the  next  redemption  of  the 
world.  Our  central  problem  is  to  regenerate  the  indi- 
vidual, and  the'  proof  that  an  individual  has  been  re- 
generated is  that  he  proceeds  to  regenerate  things  about 
him — and  that's  Democracy,  and  that's  the  Religion  of 
Labour. 

The  free  state,  the  republic,  is  the  only  instrument, 
the  sole  organisation,  through  which  universal  obedience 
to  the  laws  of  love  may  be  made  practical  for  all.  The 
idea  of  this  state  is  already  becoming  sacred  to  millions 
of  people,  for  through  it,  and  through  it  alone,  all  can 
serve  and  be  served.  For  the  greatest  of  their  hopes  the 
people  are  turning,  the  world  over,  to  the  greatest  of  their 
instruments,  the  free  state,  democracy,  by  which  every 
citizen  may  love  his  neighbour  though  he  know  him  not. 
Democracy  has  always  existed,  as  St.  Augustine  says  of 
Christianity,  but  Christianity  was  significant  because  it 
was  action.  It  took  the  fine  phrases  of  the  Stoics  and 
Epicureans  in  earnest  and  began  putting  them  in  practice. 


274  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

What  had  been  of  the  philosopher  became  of  the  people, 
so  democracy  is  beginning  to  be  conscious  that  its  truths 
are  of  wider  application  than  government  merely;  or 
rather  that  government  is  of  a  wider  destiny  than  military 
and  police  defense,  and  can  be  used  as  a  positive  pro- 
gressive instrument  for  the  conscious  creation  of  the 
public  welfare.  The  theory  that  all  persons  and  all 
properties  are  responsible  to  society  has  always  existed. 
The  people  became  democratic  when  the  idea  dawned  on 
them  that  kings  were  the  subjects,  the  people  the  sover- 
eign; that  kings  were  representative;  that  the  people 
instead  of  being  dependent  on  their  goodness  had  a 
right  to  see  that  kingly  functions  were  so  organised  that 
justice,  defense,  should  never  fail,  by  virtue  of  the 
lack  of  virtue  in  the  bad  king,  but  should  move  forward, 
operate  with  all  the  precision  and  certainty  that  socia 
organisation  could  give.  The  advance  of  this  self- 
conscious,  creative,  social  Will  into  the  fields  of  human 
association,  hitherto  left,  like  old  kingships,  without 
social  control,  is  Democracy  in  action  or  Socialism. 

Socialism  is  the  work  of  the  proletariat  only  in  the 
sense  that  it  is  the  work  of  that  pauper  which  lives  within 
every  one  of  us  who,  either  by  being  oppressive  or  being 
oppressed,  is  disinherited  of  the  best  wealth  that  is  most 
truly  his — the  wealth  of  full  communion  with  a  full 
fellowship  of  full  fellows.  The  people  have  already  used 
their  powers  of  government  to  take  private  property  for 
parks,  but  have  not  gone  to  the  point  of  using  them  for 
the  livelihood  of  the  people.  The  luxuries  they  must 
have;  the  necessities  they  still  do  without. 

Man,  the  only  reforming  animal,  has  to  be  coaxed  and 
forced  along  his  own  chosen  path,  like  some  spoiled  child 
to  its  own  pleasure.  But  reforms  are  prevented  by  the 
lack  of  tact  of  reformers.  Men  are  summoned  to  reform 


RELIGION   OF  LABOUR  275 

as  if  it  were  something  new,  never  done  before,  wrenching 
to  all  the  habits,  and  customs  and  institutions.  Reform 
is  change,  and  yet  not  change,  for  it  is  the  clearest  dis- 
closure of  history  that  constant  change  is  the  unchanging 
law  of  humanity.  We  have  experienced  enough,  re- 
corded enough,  become  self-conscious  enough  now  to  be 
able  to  look  back  over  our  course  and  see  that  certain 
things  are  as  sure  in  human  movements  as  the  certitudes 
science  has  made  known  in  rocks,  crystals,  grains,  flowers, 
heat  or  chemistry,  and  we  are  well  able  with  scientific 
confidence  to  project  the  curves  of  social  movement  into 
the  future.  We  know  that  war,  once  universal,  is  shrinking 
away.  An  irresistible  hope,  undauntable  courage,  rare 
confidence,  will  certainly  possess  mankind  once  they 
have  grasped  the  surface  and  innermost  facts  of  their 
own  nature.  A  day  of  moral  and  social  transformations 
as  rapid,  wonderful,  beneficent  is  before  us  as  those  already 
made  in  the  mechanical,  physical  world.  There  may 
be  a  brooding  period  between  like  the  Middle  Ages'  great 
sleep,  during  which  Europe  absorbed  and  digested  the 
Greek,  Roman,  Christian  civilisation. 

The  people  have  always  been  dreaming  of  heaven,  and 
they  will  make  the  dream  come  true.  The  people  who 
dream  are  the  people  who  do.  It  is  a  tremendous  fact 
of  the  public  opinion  of  our  day,  not  yet  fully  understood, 
that  hundreds  of  thousands — yes,  millions — of  men  in 
the  civilised  countries,  in  America  and  Europe,  are 
calling  for  the  literal  interpretation  and  actual  realisation 
here  and  now  of  the  promises  of  religion.  They  want 
heaven  in  their  time.  Benches  of  Bishops  and  Houses 
of  Lords  may  declare  it  irrelevant,  impracticable,  blas- 
phemous. But  processions  of  voters  in  every  capital 
emblazon  the  demand  on  their  scarlet  banners.  The 
people  are  searching  the  Bible  for  material  for  constitu 


276  MAN,   THE  SOCIAL  CREATOR 

tional  amendments,  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  has 
become  a  campaign  document — as  it  was  meant  to  be. 

What  ethics  are  varies  with  the  circumstances.  For 
him  who  has  lived  below  its  level,  it  is  ethics  to  join  an 
established  religion,  as  St.  Augustine  did.  For  him  who 
finds  that  established  religion  is  at  last  too  narrow,  it  is 
ethics  to  leave  the  established  religion,  as  Christ  did. 
We  need  no  sect  to  preach  ethics  pure  and  simple.  Men 
have  always  sought  to  be  better.  What  we  need  is 
those  who  will  tell  us  what  in  each  case  arising  is  ethics. 
The  principle  of  ethics  has  long  been  indisputable.  Our 
religious  problems  are  the  applications. 

Art  is  nature  consciously  creating  itself,  and  all  our 
arts  are  anticipations  We  paint,  model  and  make 
music  in  the  constantly  defeated,  constantly  renewed 
attempt  to  become  the  masters  of  life  The  innermost 
inspiration  of  the  artist,  whether  poet,  architect,  orator 
or  other  maker,  is  to  seize  more  life  and  make  it  better. 
Their  rivalry  is  to  personify  the  "principle  of  perfection" 
which  Plato  saw  at  work  in  the  nature  of  things  Realism 
is  the  demand,  never  silent  since  art  began,  that  art  be 
brave  and  take  each  day  the  one  step  along  the  shortening 
path  that  separates  the  picture  from  the  reality.  The 
artist  keeps  Humanity's  courage  up  and  saves  the  world 
from  heartbreak  over  the  misfits  of  its  actual  performance. 
These  beauties,  heroes,  prophets,  loves  and  songs  never 
die,  and  have  never  lived,  but  they  make  it  appear  what 
we  shall  be.  The  beauty  and  strength  we  dream  to-day 
we  will  be  creating  to-morrow.  We  will  paint  red  into 
the  cheeks  of  the  living,  hope  into  their  eyes,  beauty 
into  their  forms  and  souls.  By  the  help  of  marbles  and 
ochres  and  whistling  reed  the  creative  within  us  has  been 
making  for  itself  the  imaginings  which  it  is  to  embody 
in  nobler  material  than  stone  or  paint  or  cadences. 


RELIGION  OF  LABOUR  277 

Already  long  at  work  among  us,  though  few  have  the 
faith  or  the  eyes  to  see  it,  is  the  art  of  arts,  the  art  that 
unites  and  consummates  all,  these  other  arts,  the  art 
social,  colouring,  modelling,  harmonising  mankind  into 
living  pictures,  statues,  songs  and  temples. 

The  sky  is  full  of  starless  spaces,  unfathomed  pools 
of  the  ocean  above.  No  eye  can  find  a  ray  in  those 
abysses;  not  even  with  the  help  of  the  telescope.  But 
the  astronomer,  firm  of  faith  in  the  science  that  tells 
him  there  is  life  there  as  everywhere,  puts  a  camera  in  the 
place  of  the  human  watcher  at  the  end  of  his  great  tube. 
All  the  night  through  this  unwinking  eye  of  glass  and 
metal,  in  the  common  acids  of  a  photographic  plate,  are 
printed  infinite  revelations  of  unseen  splendours.  Suns 
and  moons,  galaxies  of  star  dust,  embroider  a  blue  beyond 
our  blue  with  golden  circles  of  light  beyond  our  ken. 
Discovered,  recorded,  mapped  by  their  own  light  in  the 
midst  of  impenetrable  gloom,  they  are  filed  away  in 
millions  on  the  shelves  of  all  our  great  observatories  for 
the  patient  study  of  future  geographers  of  the  sky. 
There  is  a  firmament  beyond  that  firmament.  There, 
too,  in  the  soul  of  man  are  the  radiant  worlds  of  love  we 
know,  worlds  of  home,  country,  friends,  and  interspersed 
are  the  dark  and  vacant  stretches  of  business  where  we  are 
told  men  are  struggling  together  and  must  always  struggle 
together  in  unloved  and  unloving  labour.  But  here,  too, 
science  verifies  in  prosaic  records  the  visions  of  all  our 
divine  men,  that  there  is  no  such  vacuum  in  the  nature  of 
man.  In  the  cold  type  of  the  articles  of  co-operative 
societies,  the  charters  of  Federations  of  Labour,  the 
Pilgrim's  covenants,  the  ordinances  of  cities,  the  laws  of 
states,  the  constitutions  of  democracies,  the  awards  of 
arbitration  courts,  the  statistics  of  common-school 
education  and  the  decreasing  death  rate  social  science 


278  MAN,   THE   SOCIAL  CREATOR 

photographs  the  catalogue  of  the  stars  the  eye  alone 
failed  to  see.  In  those  formal  documents  are  recorded 
multiplying  forms  of  public  and  private  brotherliness, 
brotherhood  domesticated  and  brotherhood  municipalised 
and  nationalised,  brotherhood  vowed  and  brotherhood 
voted. 

We  cannot  pray  best  on  our  knees..  To  worship,  we 
must  keep  by  the  side  of  our  Christ,  withstanding  with 
him  the  temptation  of  the  kingdom  of  this  world,  going 
about  doing  good,  healing  the  sick  as  he  healed  them, 
having  compassion  on  the  multitude  as  he  had,  and 
finding  bread  to  strengthen  them  to  hear  and  do  the 
truth,  with  him  driving  the  thieves  and  money  changers 
out  of  the  temple,  and  with  him  ending  the  divine  service 
only  with  life,  if  life  ever  ends. 

In  statutes  and  reports  from  government  printing 
bureaus  are  officially  stereotyped  day  after  day,  year 
after  year,  the  unending  processions  of  divine  constella- 
tions becoming  human  institutions.  The  progress  of 
events  has  eyes  the  eye  of  man  has  not.  So  far  are  we 
along  that  to  comprehend  the  destiny  we  are  creating 
we  need  visions  no  longer;  only  vision  to  see  in  the  real 
sky  these  multiplying  lights  of  the  Jife  together,  touching 
every  point  with  glory.  The  municipal,  state  and 
national  composite  photograph  will  give  a  startling 
sense  of  the  extent  to  which  collectivity  among  men  has 
already  developed. 

The  morning  stars  once  sang  together.  On  the  day 
when  the  truth  breaks  upon  man  that  these  myriads  of 
worlds  are  but  one  world,  and  that  the  lesser  common- 
wealths of  home,  town,  country  are  members  of  a  great 
commonwealth,  all  men  will  shout  together  for  joy: 
"Thy  will  is  being  done  on  earth." 

The  religious  adventures  of  one  era  become  the  habitual 


RELIGION   OF  LABOUR  279 

virtues  of  another.  The  sore  consciousness  of  our  world 
to-day,  of  its  evils  of  greed  and  selfishness,  is  the  sure  sign 
that  we  are  travailing  into  a  new  conscience,  and  through 
it  into  a  new  and  finally  unconscious  happiness  of  brother- 
liness  in  labour. 

No  man  can  be  truly  religious  who  believes  in  the  God 
of  yesterday  or  rests  in  the  God  of  to-day.  There  is  no 
salvation  save  in  the  God  of  to-morrow. 


Date  Due 


DEC  3 

o  iy/b 

Rj  FEU  ! 

1976 

RfCD  J< 

IN  26  1976 

PRINTED  IN   U.S.*.  CAT.     NO.     24      161 


3  1970  00137  7008 


A     000  634  837     9 


